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Wesley on 


Religious Education 


A Study of John Wesley’s Theories and 
Methods of the Education of 
Children in Religion 












by/ 
JOHN W. PRINCE 


Professor of Bible and Religious Education in the 
University of Chattanooga 







——————— 
The Methodist Book Concern 
New York 





Cincinnati 





Copyright, 1926, by 
JOHN W. PRINCE 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, 
including the Scandinavian. 


Printed in the United States of America 


TO MY MOTHER: 
In REVERENT MEMORY 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 
PACRMOWLE DGMENTS aiier ie oliite lariat ee ery CON. Us Gl aes ta tien Waa 7 
AN ERQUUCTION GH emo treeNTI Ay i ciel a eee UE Gee ghar amavena eMC we 9 
CHAPTER I 
THEORY OF HuMAN NATURE 
ROT ONAL SIT) ANG CHET ALLO us hale Vite Ub ur styiut Rare Gin gemeete at 13 
II. The Effect of Original Sin Upon the Human Race....... 21 
III. The Relation Between Original Sin and Actual Sin...... 24 
Mey eee LOS EXTEN MOL IGHTANIC Yh icmyaicrit ak aes leas a eR ewe lease ube oe 
V. The Work of Grace in the Salvation of Man............ 34 
‘CHAPTER II 
THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 

PPE CDETILAUCE Hire ais a einer ys WNL Gea eR noe Mae eee Harel wae 44 
II. Justification by Faith and Regeneration................ 50 
PUTO ME ANCUUNCH IONE oh tte Reve any Gor tare ena ek CelN Weare ae CUBED DNL! gait AM 57 
LV; Assurance, or ‘the Witness of the Spirit. 22. es 63 
Me EIVICE IIS OTS ITACHI te hire te week ale y iy ety yeast Rea GATS 64 

VI. The Relation Between Wesley’s Doctrines and Methodist 
Lee ESTA nb alk cee Guua RTM Ob Dakel dan Mau a MS ean PRU as 76 

CHAPTER III 
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN: 
GENERAL THEORY 

I. Wesley’s Belief in the Religion of Childhood............ 81 
II. The Purpose of Religious Education................... 87 
III. The Salvation of Children by Baptism and Training..... 93 
IV. The Salvation of Children by Training and Conversion .. 97 


6 CONTENTS 


CHAPTER IV 


THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 
PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 


PAGE 
I. The Influence of Mrs. Susanna Wesley Upon the Educa- 
tional: Pheory of John Wesley’. 54: 72 sure 103 
II. Religious Education in the Home: 

(aye Discipiines siete) wal erases aCe mee ee II5 

(D) ,Anstructiany. 0006 aay eats eaten ence ae hee ieee 122 

(c) The Children's ‘Textsi: (xe 2. ance ene 125 

II. Religious Education in the Methodist Societies ......... 132 
IV. Religious Education in the Schools ................06- 136 
CONCLUSIONS io ireicscoeew ooitbw Sibson 7 eae eae aerate eee ae ae 148 
APPENDIX y visree aca d Sabinde Ceuta gta a Rote eee Re ae a 149 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 9 jtla's hiv tee Gola aicle Gacy eee aT ee eee 154 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


Many minds and hands have contributed directly and indi- 
rectly toward the preparation of this present study. I wish to 
name the following especially for their aid: 

I am particularly grateful to Professor Luther A. Weigle, 
not only for suggesting the subject, but also for patient and 
kindly criticism and personal encouragement during the period 
of its preparation. 

Helpful suggestions and guidance to valuable source mate- 
rials for this study came from the Rev. Arundel Chapman, M.A., 
B.D.; the Rev. George Eayrs, F.R.Hist.S.; the Rev. Thomas F. 
Lockyer, B.A.; the Rev. John S. Simon, D.D.; the Rev. John 
Telford, B.A.; and the Rev. Principal H. B. Workman, D.Litt., 
D.D.—all of England. 

The staffs at the libraries of Drew Theological Seminary, 
Madison, New Jersey; of Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, 
Illinois; of Union Theological Seminary, New York City; of 
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; and of Yale 
University, New Haven, Connecticut, gave me generous aid in 
the collection of materials. I would mention especially Miss 
Emily H. Hall and Miss Anne S. Pratt, of the Yale Library, for 
their willing cooperation. 

The consent of either author or publisher concerned has 
been secured in the use of copyright material quoted in this 
book. I am glad to express to the following my obligation for the 
use of such quotations from their publications: 


Professor Hugh R. Mackintosh, New College, Edinburgh, 
Scotland. 

Charles Scribner’s Sons. 

Thomas Nelson & Sons. 

John Murray for Smith, Elder & Co., London. 

Hodder & Stoughton, Limited, London. 

The Methodist Book Concern. 

Pea ke. 


Chattanooga, Tennessee. 


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INTRODUCTION 


THE religious-educational theory of John Wesley merits 
critical study for many reasons. His position in history as the 
founder of a religious movement which has extended into every 
country in the world, numbering to-day some forty million mem- 
bers, and constituting one of the largest branches of the Protes- 
tant faith, justifies the investigation of an aspect of his thought 
that has been neglected. Besides this, in his own day he was 
a pioneer of popular education, stimulating the intellectual life 
of the English people and conducting educational enterprises 
continuously for over fifty years. Furthermore, the far-reach- 
ing religious-educational work of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
continues in unbroken line a movement which he initiated. 

To be sure, much has been written about the extent and 
nature of his endeavors to spread education. The philanthropic 
aspect of the schools he conducted has received thorough treat- 
ment. The story of the enterprise to which he was most devoted, 
the Kingswood School, has been told in a sympathetic way by 
three of its former pupils. The history of the Sunday-school 
movement of the Methodist Episcopal Church has been written, 
and takes account of his relation in general to the rise and prog- 
ress of Sunday schools. But none of these studies, nor any other 
so far as can be discovered, attempts to set forth the theories 
which form the underlying basis of his educational practice. In 
fact, his theories have been generally overlooked in the attention 
given to their immediate application. To treat this aspect of the 
life and work of John Wesley is the purpose of the following 
investigation. 

This essay will give an exposition not only of Wesley’s 
methods of religious education, but also of the fundamental doc- 
trines underlying them. In fact, the two lines of research are 
inextricably joined, and, in the last analysis, constitute one and 
the same problem, both finding their source in what he con- 
ceived to be his mission. The key to all his labors is his passion 

9 


10 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to lead sinners to inward and outward salvation, and to deliver 
English life from the inroads of vice and irreligion and start it 
on the way to righteousness and holiness. He was therefore first 
and foremost an evangelist, seeking by the methods of the revival 
to bring men to a new birth from sin and unhappiness into the 
freedom and privilege of sonship with God. But his mission to 
children began as early as his evangelistic work, and kept pace 
with it in intensity of purpose and breadth of scope. This com- 
bination in him of the evangelist and the educator suggests the 
main problem of this dissertation. It is to discover the relation- 
ship in Wesley’s system of theology between the conception that 
the religious life of adults is built up around the experience of 
conversion and the conception that the same life is dependent in 
the case of children upon definite religious instruction. Seldom 
have the two conceptions been found together in individuals, or 
in movements from their inception. Usually, the awakened inter- 
est in education is one of the effects of the revival rather than a 
movement parallel with it. Many evangelists have preached 
with great power, but only a few of the greatest have combined 
with it an eagerness to spread education. What explanation is 
there for the existence of the two lines of effort in Wesley? 
Since everything he did has a connection with his desire to save 
sinners, in what sense did he believe the education of children 
would contribute to their salvation? 

Historically, there have been two wenerat theories of the 
religion of childhood. According to one theory, children can 
be brought to saving relationship with God only when they are 
old enough to undergo conscious conversion in the way of grown 
people, and until that time are to be left alone to grow up in sin. 
According to the other theory, children are to be trained in the 
faith from their earliest years, and when they reach the age of 
personal responsibility they are to take the vows of discipleship 
for themselves without any strained efforts for emotional crises. 
The crises may be present, but they are not deemed necessary nor 
are they encouraged. This latter is the theory of the Church 
of England, to which Wesley belonged all his life, and it would 
be natural to expect him to favor it. Which of these, if either, 


INTRODUCTION II 


was his view? If he held a different view, what was that, and 
what the theories springing from it? 

In order to determine this it will be necessary to get at his 
theology, to bring together its various strands and correlate 
them. Unfortunately, this has never been done in any but a 
summary way. Theologians making the broad assumption— 
which is correct in the main—that he shared the doctrines of the 
Reformers, have presented his position but in skeleton. They 
have paid slight attention to the particular ways in which he jus- 
tified his position. And what is more pertinent here, some of the 
minor points in which he could differ from the Reformers and 
still hold their general conclusions, bear directly upon children 
and are among those that have received next to no treatment at 
all. It will be necessary, therefore, first to present his theory of 
redemption. This will include discussions of his theory of human 
nature in its ideal and present conditions, his doctrine of con- 
version and the life consequent upon it. In the second place, an 
investigation will be made into the bearing of these doctrines 
upon the life and education of children. No attempt will be made 
to present his theological positions in full except where they are 
related definitely to the education of children. Some matters 
that in a study of Wesley’s theology would need ampler treat- 
ment will be but briefly mentioned in this study of his educational 
theory. 

Throughout it must be borne in mind that Wesley was a 
preacher and not a philosopher or a systematic theologian. He 
was “remarkably inconsistent,” as Doctor Workman says, for 
a man possessing a mind so unusually expert in logic." His aim 
was practical rather than speculative. He was indeed deeply 
interested in philosophy and theology, but particularly as these 

1Workman, The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church, p. 95. Compare 
also, for a concrete example, Curtis, The Christian Faith, p. 378. In discussing 
Wesley’s views of sinless perfection, he says: “I have found no way of harmon- 
izing all of Wesley’s statements at this point; and I am inclined to think that he 
never entirely cleared up his own thinking concerning the nature and scope of 
sin. At first I believed that a path out of his seeming inconsistency might be 
found by means of an exact chronology, but a severer examination of all his 


writings forced me to give up even that hope.’’ Abundant other comments of 
this tenor are to be found in Curtis’s book. 


12 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


bore upon his main work and helped him to perform it. Conse- 
quently, oftentimes at points of crucial importance to the inves- 
tigator he does not enter into elaborate discussion or have deep 
concern for consistency. This necessitates in several instances 
a recourse to analogy and deduction in the endeavor to decipher 


his theories. 


CHARTER 1 
THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 


I. Original Sin and the Fall 


“THE three grand scriptural doctrines” at the center of 
Wesley’s theology of the nature and conditions of salvation are 
original sin, justification by faith, and holiness consequent there- 
from.’ His-.well-known summary of his creed shows the natural 
relation of these fundamentals to each other: “Our main doc- 
trines, which include all the rest, are three—that of repentance, 
of faith, and of holiness. The first of these we account, as it 
were, the porch of religion; the next, the door; the third, religion 
itself.”* The interchange of the word “repentance” for “original 
sin” in these two statements is justified, repentance, roughly 
speaking, being the conviction that one is in original sin. Their 
exact correspondence will be explained in due course. Nothing 
Wesley ever said or wrote can be detached from these three prin- 
ciples of his system. How important and indispensable he con- 
sidered them is shown from a letter he wrote in 1764 to forty or 
fifty clergymen, evangelicals of the Church of England, in which 
he proposed a union of all clergymen who agree in the essentials 
—original sin, justification by faith, and holiness of heart and 
life—with the only other condition that the lives of the men who 

1 Wesley: Works, Vol. VI, p. 757. All references in the footnotes to Wesley’s 
Works indicate ‘‘The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M.,’’ New York, 
1831, edited by John Emory and published in seven volumes. Although this 
edition is styled the “first American complete and standard edition,” it does not 
include several of Wesley’s writings employed in this study. References to 
these will be especially indicated. Furthermore, although Emory’s edition of 
Wesley’s Works contains his Journal, this study has used the standard edition 
of “The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.,” London, 1909-1916, edited by 
the Rev. Nehemiah Curnock and issued in eight volumes. This is the latest 
and most scholarly edition, and contains notes and documents not easily acces- 
sible elsewhere. All references to the Journal in the footnotes refer to this edi- 
tion. 

2 Works, Vol. V, p. 333. 

13 


14 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


hold these answer to their doctrine.* These doctrines he felt to be 
of deeper importance than others for vital religion. Among any 
people ignorant of these Christianity could not accomplish any- 
thing.* The other doctrines which he stressed do, as he claimed, 
naturally lead to or spring from these three fundamentals. Taken 
as a whole they constitute a system of theology whose structural 
unity has received little written appreciation. 

Of the three doctrines, the doctrine of original sin is the first 
in order and importance. It forms the porch of his theological 
structure. From it he derives his theory of human nature. Wes- 
ley was profoundly ‘convinced of the fact of the Fall. He was 
much concerned over the current denial of depravity by the 
rationalists and their insistence upon the goodness of human 
nature. Such a denial, he said, is no ‘other than old Deism in 
a new dress; seeing it saps the very foundation of all revealed 
religion, whether Jewish or Christian.’”® Wesley felt it his Chris- 
tian duty to provide an antidote to such deadly poison as was 
spreading not only through the nation but was making inroads 
into the universities.° To this-end he wrote a long and delib- 
erate treatise on The Doctrine of Original Sin According to Scrip- 
ture, Reason, and Experience, in answer to a work on the Doc- 
trine of Original Sin, by Dr. John Taylor. It is interesting to 
note in passing that Jonathan Edwards wrote a rejoinder at 
about the same time to the same work, called The Great Chnistian 
Doctrine of Original Sin Defended." 

Wesley’s treatise is divided into seven parts. The last four 
parts consist of extracts from Doctor Watts’ Ruin and Recovery 
of Mankind, from tracts by the Rev. Samuel Hebden, and from 
Boston’s Fourfold State of Man, all of which defend the doctrine 
under discussion. Wesley’s own contribution to the subject is 
in the first three parts. There he deals with the present and past 
state of humanity and defends the scriptural method of account- 
ing for it. 

From this work and from a sermon on “Original Sin,” and 

3 Journal, Vol. V, pp. 60-61. 5 Ibid., Vol. V, pp. 492, 650. 


4 Works, Vol. II, p. 437. 6 Jbtd., Vol. V, p. 492. 
7 Faulkner, Wesley as Sociologist, Theologian, Churchman, 43-44. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 15 


from many references to the same subject running through his 
sermons and other writings, it is possible to gather his views on 
the place and significance of the doctrine in his system. Viewing 
the past and present condition of mankind, Wesley sees univer- 
sal corruption. God’s purpose for the race was very different 
from the course it has taken. From the earliest times down to 
the present the race shows unmistakable signs of a departure 
from God’s plan for it, a falling away from what it was meant to 
be, with regard to virtue and knowledge. The present condition 
is no better, either in the Christian world or in the heathen and 
Mohammedan. A curious evidence of the lack of common sense 
in the heathen is the foot-binding custom of the Chinese and their 
alphabet of thirty thousand letters. In the Christian world no 
further sign of utter degeneracy is needed than the presence of 
war. In his treatment of this subject Wesley waxes hot and elo- 
quent. “Surely all our declamations on the strength of human 
reason, and the eminence of our virtues, are no more than the 
cant and jargon of pride and ignorance, so long as there is such 
a thing as war in the world.”® War is the “complication of all 
the miseries incident to human nature” and is the most demonstra- 
tive proof of the universality of ungodliness..° “So long as 
this monster stalks uncontrolled, where is reason, virtue, hu- 
manity?”"* Then coming down from the general to particulars, 
Wesley draws an unflattering picture of conditions in Great 
Britain, domestic, professional, and social. Lawyers, government 
officials, clergymen come in for appraisal along with humbler folk. 
Then, if there is any doubt of the truth of depravity remaining 
in anyone’s mind, let him begin at his own home, surveying him- 
self, his family, and his neighbors. He will find the same con- 
ditions of human misery and wickedness in plain evidence. Even 
the children of the home, whom the parent so admires and be- 
lieves to be happily different from other children, are not ex- 
cluded. Evil tempers, self-will, passions, stubbornness, and surli- 
ness exist in them to some extent at least even before they are 


8 Works, V, 506. 10 Thid., V, 522-523. 
9 Thid., V, 512. 1 Jbid., V, 513. 


16 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


two years old.’* This universal degeneracy seen from every 
standpoint and condition of life in the past and present is the 
cause of universal misery, and the misery is the proof of the de- 
generacy.’* Such are the facts. How account for them? 

This undenied bias of all ages and nations to the side of 
vice and ignorance rather than virtue and knowledge cannot be 
explained by attributing it to evil customs. Accounting for it 
thus leads no nearer to solution, for the question logically arises, 
Whence came customs to be evil? Nor can it be explained by 
bad education, for then the cause, prevalence, and persistence of 
bad education must be explained. Wickedness must have been 
antecedent to evil custom and education.“ 

The only true method of accounting for original sin is the 
scriptural method. The transgression of Adam in Paradise 
brought sin into the world and entailed its consequences upon 
all his descendants. This is the key to the whole mystery of the 
baseness of human nature and the misery and wickedness of the 
world. Wesley is careful to clear God of the responsibility for 
the origin of evil. He does not have much to say as to the actual 
cause nor elaborate the circumstances of the entrance of sin into 
the world, but he does exonerate God. He, at least, is not respon- 
sible for the corruption of human nature.*® Evil came into the 
world from Lucifer, the fallen angel, who became devil. He was 
the first sinner in the universe, the author of sin, who introduced 
it into creation. Together with him a great host of angels fell 
from heaven and likewise became devils..7 It was Lucifer who 
tempted Adam and who ever since, in conjunction with the other 
devils under him, has been tempting mankind.** Thus did orig- 
inal sin enter into the world. Asa matter of fact, the doctrine of 
original sin is highly to the credit of God. To believe that God 
created man in his fallen state, in his present stupid, stubborn, 
intractable condition, with weakened understanding and perverse 
will, would be to impugn the very goodness of God. We must 


22 Thid., V, 518-519. 16 Thid., V, 574. 
13 Thid., V, 521. 17 Totd., Li, 70. 
Mt Thid., V, 523-524. 18 Thid., I, 376-384; II, 70, 141. 


6 Ibid., II, 479. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 17 


either disbelieve in such a God, says Wesley, or believe him to be 
utterly evil. If that is his nature, the faith even of a Deist would 
not be justified. Atheism, or the belief of a Manichee, would 
be more logical and inevitable.’® ‘I know not what honor we can 
pay to God, if we think that man came out of his hands in the 
condition wherein he is now.””° 

Adam as he was created by God was perfect. He was 
created in God’s image—in his natural image and in his moral 
image. Wesley makes his natural image to correspond to the 
spiritual nature of God, and uses the terms “natural image” and 
“spiritual image” interchangeably.** This consists of the faculties 
of understanding, will, and liberty, and is what constitutes man a 
spiritual being.” Every human spirit possesses these faculties. 
Of these the understanding is the most essential to a spiritual 
being, if not the very essence of such.”* It carries much the same 
meaning as reason, to which it is to be preferred, being a less 
ambiguous term.** Its principal powers are apprehension, judg- 
ment, and movement from one judgment to another.”” Its main 
purpose is to guide the will and liberty, to furnish the rule of 
action for the whole of human nature.*® By the will Wesley 
means the power man has to exercise his nature, his passions and 
tempers, his likes and dislikes, which determine his bent and are 
summed up under the term “affections.’”’ In fact, these affections 
are but the will exercising itself in various ways.*’ Wesley says 
the faculty of liberty was in his day often confused with the 
will. But, as a matter of fact, it is neither a property of the 
will nor does it bear the same nature, but it is a faculty distinct 
from it, an entity by itself. It is the power of self-determination, 
the property to choose to do or not to do, to elect good as well 
as evil.** It is indispensable to a free agent, without it the under- 
standing and the will being utterly useless, incapable of either 
virtue or holiness.*? It is evident that Wesley means by this 


19 Thid., V, 574. % Ibid., II, 127. 

20 Tbed., VII, 112. 26 Tbid., II, 50, 69; VI, 208. 
41 Wesley: Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament, I, 7. 

2 Works, I, 400. 27 Thid., II, 69. 

23 Tbid., II, 69. 38 Tbid., VI, 208. 


* Tbid., II, 51, 127. 29 Ibid., II, 36, 69. 


18 WESLEY ON. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


power of liberty nothing more or less than the common accepta- 
tion of the word “will.’’*° 

These are the faculties with which Adam was endowed 
in his spiritual nature when created by God. He possessed these 
faculties in perfect form. His understanding was without defect, 
having such powers as no man has had since, enabling him to see 
truth as directly as the eye sees light. Perhaps while in his 
perfect state it was not necessary for him to reason, for he may 
have been able to discern truth by a kind of intuition.** He was 
also free from defects of passions or affections, his will being 
unbiased toward evil, since it was under the dictate of his infalli- 
ble understanding.** His liberty being likewise dictated by his 
understanding led him to choose only the right.**. 

Adam was also created in God’s moral image. He was 
endowed with a moral nature like the divine, holy and righteous.** 
At this point lay his supreme perfection, for he had an aptitude 
for appreciating, loving and obeying God,® a condition that made 
absolutely unnecessary the faculty of faith.*° He was morally 
perfect because possessing all the faculties God gave him he used 
them legitimately, being correct always in his knowledge, uniform 
in his obedience, and genuine in his love.*’ “And, to crown all, 
he was immortal.”°* He was made that he might know and enjoy 
and serve God forever.*® Coeval with his nature he was given a 
law, “a complete model of all truth, so far as is intelligible to a 
finite being.’”*° This Adamic law was the law of works, the 
same in substance as the angelic law, common to angels and to 
men.** His powers and abilities being exactly as God would 
have them, he was required to exercise them to the glory of God. 
“Consequently, this law, proportioned to his original powers, re- 
quired that he should always think, always speak, and always act 
precisely right, in every point whatever. He was well able so to 
do: and God could not but require the service he was able to 


30 Thid., VI, 208. % Tbid., I, 326-327. 
31 Jiid., IT, 50, 69; V, 550; VI, 512:  . *? Idtd.; II, 50. 
32 Thtd., II, 50. 388 Thid., II, 51. 
33 [hid. 39 Tbid., I, 307. 
4 Jbid., II, 69, 71. 40 Tbid., I, 307. 


35 Thid., II, 50. 41 Jiid., I, 307-308; VI, 512. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 19 


pay.’’*? In this law he was to continue until his trial on earth 


was ended.** 

Not only was Adam created perfect in his moral and spirit- 
ual nature, but also in his physical nature. He was clothed with 
physical immortality and incorruption, and knew no bodily weak- 
ness or sickness as he knew no sin. Although he was formed out 
of the dust of the earth, he was yet free from all seeds of decay.** 
His physical nature was at the service of his moral and spiritual 
natures, and did not clog them, but worked in harmony and 
accord with them.*° 

Such was “the original nature of mankind, when it was first 
‘brought into being.’”*° It is quite beside the purpose of this 
study to criticize Wesley’s theology; but one cannot let pass such 
a highly imaginative picture of man without at least saying that 
there is no just ground in Scripture for it. The only references 
that could possibly be used as a support—and these would be 
strained to the breaking point if so used—are the statements that 
God created man in his own image, and that after he had finished 
he saw that what he had created was good. 

It is hardly necessary to assert that Wesley meant a very dif- 
ferent thing by the term “original nature’? from the content 
given it by modern psychology, as, for instance, in Thorndike’s 
book on The Original Nature of Man. According to modern 
terminology, original nature means man’s uneducated equipment, 
his nature independent of post-natal nurture. Wesley meant by 
it man’s nature as it came from God in the first parents, prior 
to their fall into disobedience of God’s law. What is known 
according to modern psychology as original nature Wesley covers 
by the term “our present corrupt nature.’’*? 


” Tbid., VI, 513, 739. 

43 Tbid., I, 45. 

“4 Tbid., VII, 583. This reference is to the preface to the first edition of 
Wesley’s Work, ‘‘Primitive Physick: or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing 
Most Diseases.”” The full text is found in Vol. 25 of The Works of the Rev. John 
Wesley, M.A., Bristol, 1771-1774, 32 Vols. 

4 Tbid., VI, 512. 

6 Ibid., V, 543. 

47 Jbid., V, 543. 


20 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


After the Fall Adam had a corrupt nature. He was created 
“able to stand and yet liable to fall.’’** The very possibility of 
falling into sin was one of the liabilities of his freedom as a moral 
agent. And the design of his trial and probation was to test his 
ability to stand. But when the devil tempted him, he yielded, 
rebelling against the law of God and willfully and deliberately 
violating it. “By this willful act of disobedience to his Creator, 
this flat rebellion against his Sovereign, he openly declared that 
he would no longer have God to rule over him; that he would be 
governed by his own will, and not the will of Him that created 
him; and that he would not seek his happiness in God, but in the 
world, in the works of his hands.”*? Whereupon the punishment 
that was threatened if he disobeyed was inflicted upon him, and 
in that day he lost his original nature and suffered physically and 
spiritually. 

His body began to die and became subject to weakness and 
sickness, which inevitably lead to physical death.°? From that 
time it became unable to cooperate with his moral and spiritual 
natures, but pressed down both his mind and his soul and became 
a heavy drag upon them, serving them at best but imperfectly.* 
Furthermore, he suffered the most dreadful of all possible deaths, 
the death of his soul. Being separated from God, he lost the 
image of God and the life of God in his soul.°? Righteousness 
and holiness departed from him, and he became unholy, full of 
sin and guilt and tormenting fears, incapable any longer of loving 
God or desiring him.°* He not only lost altogether the moral 
image of God, but also in part the natural image of him.** His 
understanding became darkened so that his knowledge of God ' 
became dim and vague.®® His heart also, being turned from God, 
followed its own bent and will.°® And his liberty became so im- 
paired that it was from that time free only to choose evil. 





48 Tbhid., I, 400. 

49 Thid. 

50 Joid., II, 71; VII, 583. Also, Primitive Physick, 4. 
51 Tiid., II, 34. 54 Tiid., II, 36. 

82 Tbid., I, 400-401; II, 71. 55 Tbid., I, 401. 


583 Tbid., II, 71. % Ihid., II, 70, 73. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 21 


II. The Effect of Original Sin Upon the Human Race 


But Adam’s sin was not limited to himself, since, in addi- 
tion to being the father of the race, he was the federal head, the 
first representative of mankind, or a public person, as the Assem- 
bly’s Larger Catechism defines him, in whom all mankind were 
contained.°’ “The greatest aggravation of his sin was, that he 
involved all his posterity in sin and ruin by it. He could not but 
know that he stood as a public person, and that his disobedience 
would be fatal to all his seed; and if so, it was certainly the 
greatest treachery and the greatest cruelty that ever was.’’® 
The entire human race, including its youngest members, being 
dependent upon his behavior, fell in his fall and have ever since 
suffered the most deplorable effects.°? Original sin was trans- 
mitted to them and the guilt of his sin was imputed to them.® 
The sentence pronounced upon him included all evils that could 
befall the souls and bodies of his posterity. That which charac- 
terized Adam’s state after his fall is the condition of mankind 
ever since, a fallen state.“ More precisely, the imputation of 
Adam’s sin means that the bodies of men become mortal, their 
souls suffer the death of disunion from God and are sinful and 
devilish, and liable to eternal death.°* Wesley bases these argu- 
ments, as arguments on this head are usually based, upon Paul’s 
teaching in Romans 5. 12-20 and 1 Corinthians 15. 21-22, that 
in Adam all die, by one man sin came into the world, etc.** He 
admitted his uncertainty as to the method by which original sin 
is transmitted, believing it was not especially important to know, 
so long as there is no doubt of the truth of the transmission. He 
is of the opinion, however, that it is handed down by natural 
generation through the blood unity of the race with Adam.™ 

Wesley also infers the imputation of Adam’s guilt from the 
fact of the sufferings of the human race. In both adults and 


‘7 Tbid., I, 46; II, 36; V, 539, 588-589. 

58 Wesley: Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament, I, 7. 
* Works, II, 36; V, 539, 540, 548-549. 

60 Tbid., V, 539-540. 63 Thid., V, 524. 

1 Tiid., VII, 113. 4 Thid., V, 539, 549. 

®@ Thid., V, 195-196. 


22 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


infants these sufferings are of the nature of punishments, Just 
as the sins of the race were imputed to Christ and he was pun- 
ished for them, although he did not commit them, so the sin of 
Adam is imputed to the race with all the sufferings consequent 
upon it. Obviously, God does not look upon infants any more 
than adults as innocent, otherwise he would not inflict upon them 
the punishment of physical sickness and death and moral estrange- 
ment from himself.°° “They suffer; therefore, they deserve to 
suffer.’’®? 

It is not to be understood, however, that this punishment 
for original sin includes the eternal death of the soul in the same 
way as it does the physical death of the body. “I believe none 
ever did, or ever will, die eternally, merely for the sin of our 
first father.’”®8 The connection of eternal death with original 
sin is but indirect. Only if because of original sin men commit 
actual sin, which is the inevitable outcome if it is left to take its 
course, will the souls of men perish. A distinction is to be made, 
therefore, between infants and adults. Obviously, infants are 
incapable of preventing themselves from sin and of availing 
themselves of any measures for their redemption. “No infant 
ever was, or ever will be, ‘sent to hell for the guilt of Adam’s 
sin,’ seeing it is canceled by the righteousness of Christ as soon 
as they are sent into the world.’ All others will escape the con- 
demnation for Adam’s sin only on condition that they avail them- 
selves of the righteousness of Christ, which will be imputed 
to them on condition and from the time that they believe.” This 
righteousness, which comes as a free gift to everyone born into 
the world, is unto salvation to those of riper years, who are 
inevitably sinners, only on condition that they fulfill the require- 
ments of its application. And unless they do, they will be damned 
eternally.” 

Wesley constantly views the condition of human nature 
brought about by Adam’s sin in terms of disease. He diagnoses 


6 Tbid., VI, 722. 69 Thid., VII, 97. 
6 Tbid., V, 577, 579. OT hedy Vio075: 
67 Thid., V, 579. 1 Tbid., V, 528 


68 Tbid., V, 577. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 23 


it through a physician’s eyes and describes it with a physician’s 
vocabulary. “The whole world is, indeed, in its present state, 
only one great infirmary. All that are therein are sick of sin; 
and their one business is to be healed.”** The diseased condition 
of the body aggravates the faculties of the soul and makes them 
unfit for right action.* For the soul sympathizes with the body 
and is sensitive to its distempers.“* Being inextricably joined to 
a diseased body and forced to dwell in it until death, the soul 
cannot do as it would either in thought, speech, or action, but 
is pressed down and well-nigh submerged and hindered in its 
more exact operations.” The faculty of the understanding is 
especially disabled. As it plays upon the body as on an instru- 
ment of material keys, thinking can be no better than the nature 
and state of the body.‘® Hence the apprehension is indistinct, 
the judgment false, and the reasoning wrong in countless in- 
stances.‘’ And since to guide and enlighten the will and liberty 
is the particular function of the understanding, every mistake 
that it makes leads naturally to a mistake in practice.”* Certain 
spiritual ailments are therefore “a natural effect of the disordered 
machine, which proportionably disorders the mind.’”’”® By these 
combined circumstances the body is not able to live up to the soul, 
nor the soul to coerce the body. Such is the condition of human 
spirits dependent upon mortal bodies.®° 

Wesley’s belief in the baneful effects of a diseased body 
upon the mind and soul arouses one’s speculation concerning his 
extended philanthropic labors to relieve sickness. For twenty-six 
or -seven years he made anatomy and physic (the eighteenth cen- 
tury term for medicine) the diversion of his leisure hours.** 
While in America he assumed among his other duties the office of 
medical missionary. In England he conducted several dispen- 
saries for the needy sick and made other practical provisions for 
their relief.°° He appointed in the Methodist Societies ‘Visitors 


72 Thid., II, 545. 7 Thid., V, 559. 

73 Ibid., V, 559. 78 Ibid., II, 34; VI, 513. 
4 Thid., I, 420. 79 Tbid., VII, 54. 

% Ibid., II, 34; VI, 513. 80 Jhzd., II, 34. 

 Toid., IT, 34; VII, 54. TDMA, Ta he 


& Jbid., For full account, see North: Early Methodist Philanthropy, 36-46. 


24 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of the Sick,”’ a measure that proved to be of great good in a period 
when expert medical service, especially among the poor, was gen- 
erally lacking.** During his lifetime he published five different 
medical treatises, original and extracted from other authors, 
chief among which he rated his own work called Primitive 
Physick: or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Dis- 
eases. This work, he wrote in a pastoral letter, “if you had any 
regard for your bodies or your children, ought to be in every 
house.’’** The question naturally arises after an acquaintance 
with the extent of his medical labors whether he was not moti- 
vated by something besides a deep solicitude for the physical 
welfare of men. To be sure, he was moved by sheer human 
compassion for people suffering from any trouble whatever, and 
it should not be suggested that if there were no other reason he 
would have withheld these labors. But it still remains that he 
conceived his mission to be something more vital than physical 
welfare work. It was to cure the disease of sin and to bring 
salvation to the souls of men. Anything, therefore, that could 
be done toward making people physically well would, according 
to his view of the relation of the body to the soul, further the 
cause of salvation. This may have been one of the ulterior reasons 
for his interest in medicine. 

But Wesley holds that the soul is hindered in its operations 
not simply because it is oppressed by its habitation in a mortal 
body, but also because it is itself sick by nature. It brings with 
it into the world certain inbred diseases. The more fundamental 
of these diseases, from which all others spring, are four: atheism, 
pride, love of the world, and self-will.4* These Wesley describes 
as “those parent sins.”®* Inasmuch as children are included in 
the misery caused by Adam’s disobedience, they share these 
diseases with adults. In fact, inasmuch as original sin is trans- 
mitted by natural generation, all who come into the world are 


83 Tbid., V, 186-187. 
* Journal, V, 31, note 2, cited by editor. 


® Works, I, 287, 39@-397; II, 475. 
8 Ibid., I, 287. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 25 


from their very birth tainted with these diseases of sin. Wesley’s 
sermon “On the Education of Children” describes these diseases 
in their bearing upon children, and they are seen to be the same 
as those to which he refers constantly when speaking of adults. 
The similarity is brought out sharply in a comparison of this 
sermon with that on “Original Sin.” Both speak of these dis- 
eases as being in man “by nature.’ Man brings them with him 
into the world at birth. The passages relating to them could be 
exchanged from one sermon to the other without doing damage 
to either discourse. There are several diseases described in the 
sermon “On the Education of Children” which are not mentioned 
in the sermon on “Original Sin.” These are anger, a deviation 
from truth, a proneness to speak or act contrary to justice, and un- 
mercifulness. It is not to be imagined that Wesley believed them 
to be limited solely to children. The very term “by nature” makes 
this clear. He does charge adults with them, and in scathing 
terms.*’ But in these cases he speaks of them as branches of 
the parent sins. No other reason than this is evident for leaving 
them out of his sermon on “Original Sin.” The description of 
these diseases here to follow will be for the most part a syn- 
thesis from these two sermons.*® 

The meaning of each disease of human nature goes back 
to the experience of Adam and becomes clear in that light.8° By 
nature man 1s an atheist. Naturally, he has no knowledge of 
God, no more idea of him or acquaintance with him than the 
beasts of the field. It is true that he acquires by inference through 
reflection and education the conception of an eternal, powerful 
Creator; but he is far removed from any intimate knowledge of 
him. Nor could he have by his natural understanding, for such 
knowledge of the Father comes only through the revelation of 
his Son, Jesus Christ. As a consequence, he has no love for God 
nor fear of him, as these depend upon a knowledge of him. Wher- 
ever such fear and love are found, they are acquired by conver- 
sation or example. In many people not even the knowledge of 

87 Tbid., I, 65, 193-198; II, 345-346, 475-476. 


88 Thid., I, 392-399; II, 307-316. 
89 Ibid., II, 70. 


26 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


God as Creator exists. Through general perversity of mind, 
God is separated from his creation, which is believed to exist 
and have life without his sustaining power. This is “a kind of 
practical atheism.”°° 

Another insidious disease is pride. Instead of worshiping 
God, man is an idolater and worships himself. He thereby robs 
God of what is due him and usurps his glory, instead of thinking 
of himself humbly as he ought to think. The reminder that it 
was chiefly pride that led to the fall of the angels from heaven 
and turned them into devils makes one sufficiently aware of the 
fatal character of this disease. 

The disease of self-will is the twin sister of pride and with 
it bears the image of the devil. It is a question which of the two 
is the more fatal distemper. The sinful character of self-will is 
the refusal of the one who has it to consider the will of God as 
the supreme regulative rule of life, and instead to indulge his 
own will, the leaning and bent of his sinful affections and pas- 
sions. It was this disease that contributed so largely to Adam’s 
disobedience of the law of God. 

Through atheism, and pride, and the indulgence of one’s own 
will it is easy to fall into the disease, the love of the world. Hav- 
ing no knowledge of God and consequently no fear of him or 
love of him, man naturally seeks happiness in earthly and sensual 
things. This disease has three symptoms or evidences. First, 
there is a tendency in man to gratify the low desires and pleasures 
of the flesh and to seek happiness in them. Man is dominated and 
led captive by sensual appetites to such an extent that it may 
be doubted whether the beasts are not his superiors. A second 
symptom is the desire of the eye, the propensity to crave the 
pleasures of the imagination by the sight of great and beautiful 
and uncommon objects. A third symptom is the pride of life, 
the natural desire for honor and high esteem and applause. The 
possession of riches is regarded as the chief means to such honor. 
The sinfulness of the pride of life is the refusal to seek one’s 
honor and praise solely in God by pleasing him. 

Such are the fatal diseases of human nature born with every 

90 Jbid., I, 202. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 27 


soul that comes into the world. Taken together, they constitute 
a “carnal mind,” an infection spreading over the soul like a creep- 
ing vine leading to every other branch of sin.®* It is a state of 
inward, moral disorder, a condition of heart that is “inward 
hell.”°? Its very inwardness lends propriety to its designation 
as disease. 

These are the diseases that are mentioned in both sermons. 
It remains to speak of the sins that are mentioned besides these 
in the sermon “On the Education of Children’’—anger, a devia- 
tion from the truth, a proneness to speak or act contrary to 
justice, and unmercifulness. They are almost self-explanatory. 
Anger is primarily the desire for revenge for personal injury. 
Although it is “short madness,” it is real insanity while it lasts. 
The disease of deviation from truth covers all open falsehood, 
all departures from simplicity, all efforts to dissimulate and 
appear what one is not. The tendency to speak or act contrary 
to justice causes one to be partial to himself and whenever possi- 
ble to consult his own interest and pleasure more than strict 
justice would allow. The last disease mentioned is unmerciful- 
ness, the way of dealing with people and all living creatures un- 
kindly and as we would not like to have them deal with us. 


III. The Relation Between Original Sin and Actual Sin 


From original sin spring most if not all actual sins.” 
Herein lies its seriousness and the necessity of taking account of 
it. Human nature, by the combinations of these deep-rooted and 
insidious diseases, is biased wholly toward evil and is forced nat- 
urally to prefer evil and to choose it from the good. Wesley’s 
broad survey of human conditions in every country and every 
age led him to ask: “How is it, that, in all ages, the scale has 
turned the wrong way, with regard to every man born into the 
world?” ‘How comes it, that all men under the sun should 
choose evil rather than good?’** The answer is that given by 
Augustine—that human nature inherits a bias to evil. Ante- 


1 Ibid., I, 398. % Thid., V, 548. 
8 Jind.) VI, ‘36. % Thid., V, 593- 


28 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


cedent to any preference in the matter, the individual is inclined 
to choose evil rather than good.** It is not to be accounted for 
by habit formation due to wrong training in youth, although it 
is true that habits are contracted from a vicious environment. 
This condition would, indeed, be lessened together with the conse- 
quent wickedness of the world if parents were virtuous and 
realized their duty of raising their children virtuously. The bias 
is not merely the infection children receive from their immediate 
parents, although this is, indeed, a part of it.°* The disorder is 
caused by something more deeply rooted than evil training, for 
it asserts itself long before there has been opportunity for chil- 
dren to contract evil habits.°° Wesley quotes Doctor Watts with 
approval on this point, that children “are strongly inclined to 
evil, long before ill habits can be contracted.”°8 This condition 
of a bias is observable in children before they are even two years 
old.°° And the children of even careful parents, despite disci- 
pline, show evidences of the beginnings of passions and appetites 
that are obviously evil.°° The consequence is that children are 
born lacking a fair start toward that life of holiness for which 
God intended them.*” 

The truth that Wesley is here stating and is so much con- 
cerned with, by reason of its great importance to his system, is 
that sin is not limited to the individual will. He wishes to make 
clear that the individual is estranged from ‘God, not simply by his 
own personal acts of disobedience, but altogether apart from 
them and prior to them, by something deeper, by some evil 
inherent in his very nature. 

He does not neglect the conception brought to such prom- 
inence by modern psychology of the inheritance of sin through 
the social environment. In a passage in which he almost breaks 
out into a challenge to the Almighty, he says: ““How many are, 
from their very infancy, hedged in with such relations, that seem 
to have no chance (as some speak), no possibility, of being useful 


9% at V, 548, 562, 586, 593. 99 Tbid., V, 519. 
% Thid., V, 562. 100 Ibid, V, 563, 567, 585-586. 
97 Ibid., V, 562-563. 101 Toid., V, 536-537. 


88 Jbid., V, 586. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 29 


to themselves or others? Why are they, antecedent to their own 
choice, entangled in such connections? Why are hurtful people 
so cast in their way that they know not how to escape them? And 
why are useful persons hid out of their sight, or snatched away 
from them at their utmost need? O God, how unsearchable are 
thy counsels! . . . Nothing is more sure than that so vast a 
majority of mankind are, so far as we can judge, cut off from 
all means, all possibility of holiness, even from their mother’s 
womb. What possibility is there that a Hottentot, a New Zea- 
lander, or an inhabitant of Nova Zembla, if he lives and dies 
there, should ever know what holiness means? or, consequently, 
ever attain it? . . . As soon as he is born into the world he is 
absolutely in the power of his savage parents and relations, who, 
from the first dawn of reason, train him up in the same ignorance, 
atheism, and barbarity with themselves. He has no chance, so 
to speak, he has no possibility of any better education. What 
trial has he then? From the time he comes into the world till 
he goes out of it again, he seems to be under a dire necessity of 
living in all ungodliness and unrighteousness. But how is this? 
How can this be the case with so many millions of the souls that 
God has made? Art thou not ‘the God of all the ends of the 
earth, and of them that remain in the broad seas’ ?”’2 

Wesley is also aware of the grave dangers of an evil environ- 
ment to those who have it in their power to flee from it. This 
is clearly set forth in two sermons he placed together in his col- 
lected sermons: “On Friendship with the World” and “In What 
Sense We Are to Leave the World.’ The gist of the thought 
therein contained is that friendship with the world is sinful 
because it throws one into evil companionships, which make 
easy the committing of actual sins and spread the infection of the 
diseases of nature. The very spirit of wicked people is infec- 
tious, and spiritual diseases are caught almost as easily as physi- 
cal. Just as there is an atmosphere surrounding every human 
body, inescapable by those about it, so the human spirit has an 
atmosphere carrying inescapable contagion of pride, self-suffi- 


102 Thid., II, 123-124. 
108 Joid., II, 196-212. 


30 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ciency, and other spiritual distempers.*%* Christian people should 


therefore keep as far as possible from all ungodly men, should 
avoid needless intercourse and contact with them. For vice is 
of such an infectious character that it can even renew the bias 
of nature which a Christian has begun to conquer.*”° 

The reason Wesley does not speak more fully of social hered-. 
ity in its wider aspects is not, then, due to any blindness on his 
| part to its significance, as the foregoing amply shows. He was 
interested in spreading the truth that the cause of human degen- 
_eracy is inherent in human nature, and not merely due to the fact 
' that we are born into an evil civilization that shapes us inescapably 
without our consent and prior to our ability to withstand it. 
Folk are enlisted into the battle of life with weakened natures, 
constitutions not only susceptible to sin and liable to diseases, 
but already infected with diseases of sin in advanced stages, 
which logically and inevitably form a bent and bias of nature. 

The significance of this diseased state of nature is that it 
inclines the individual to commit actual sins. It is for actual 
sins of word and thought and deed as distinguished from original 
sin that the individual is to be condemned. He is not responsible 
for the nature that is so constituted that it leads him into sin, but 
for permitting it to lead him without taking the available meas- 
ures to withstand and overcome it. Adam is responsible for the 
original sin, for the infection of the individual’s nature; but the 
individual himself is responsible when through his own fault 
he commits actual outward and inward sins, and for these he will 
be liable to punishment in the next world.*°° But so long as he 
wars against his nature, so that it does not have dominion over 
him, he is free from condemnation. In keeping with this dis- 
tinction between the infection of nature and the evil deeds that 
are due to it is Wesley’s definition of sin. ‘Nothing is sin, 
strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law 
of God.’*% As original sin will not be exterminated from the 
world until the end of the world,?°° the inward state of sin will 


104 Thid., II, 200-201. 107 Thid., VII, 56. 


10 Thid., II, 208-209. 108 Tbid., VI, 76. 
106 Tbid., V, 556. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 31 


persist in every individual, even in the heart of the believer and 
the regenerate.*°? The seeds of pride and anger and self-will and 
evil desires and sins of every other kind will continue in his 
heart, and he will feel more or less of them springing up within 
him. He will experience wandering thoughts and coldness of 
affection toward God. He will be unable to prevent involuntary 
transgressions, or sins of surprise through sudden and violent 
and unforeseen temptations.“° But only his voluntary trans- 
gressions will be counted against him. The rest, the inward 
state and sins naturally arising from it, will not be reckoned as 
actual sin unless he gives way to them consciously and willfully, 
unless they have the concurrence of his will.’ 


IV. The Extent of Depravity 


As to Wesley’s belief in the extent of depravity, it is possi- 
ble to take contradictory positions. Stevens holds that Wesley 
disliked the phrase “total depravity,” but that he nevertheless 
agreed with the usual definition given it...* Workman points 
out that it was the early Methodist doctrine, but that in later 
times it has been quite widely relinquished.*4* McConnell says 
that it does not belong essentially to the Methodist theology.*™ 
As a matter of fact, it is difficult to be sure of Wesley’s opinion 
on this point. Certain of his statements do not admit of any 
other interpretation than that he believed depravity to be abso- 
lute. Others seem to give room in his system to partial deprav- 
ity. But if human nature has been committed to an exact re- 
semblance of Adam’s nature after his fall, it cannot be other 


aids, 1, 10S + V7 270, 

110 Joid., I, 71-73. 

1 Thid., I, 16, 74. 

12 Stevens: A History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, 
Called Methodism. II, 409. 

134 New History of Methodism, edited by Townsend, Workman, and Eayrs, 
I, 52-53. This reference is to the Introduction of this monumental history 
written by Workman. It was published separately in revised and expanded 
form as “The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church.” It is referred to in 
this essay in its first form as a part of the New History of Methodism, unless 
otherwise indicated. 

4 McConnell, The Essentials of Methodism, 12, 27. 


Ke WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


than utterly depraved, for such his became, as has been shown. 
Wesley makes it the distinguishing mark between Christianity 
and heathenism, that the first believes in “the entire depravation 
of the whole of human nature, of every man born into the world, 
in every faculty of his soul, not so much by those particular vices 
which reign in particular persons, as by the general flood of 
atheism and idolatry, of pride, self-will, and love of the world. 
This, therefore, is the first, grand, distinguishing point between 
heathenism and Christianity. The one acknowledges that many 
men are infected with many vices, and even born with a proneness 
to them; but supposes withal, that in some that natural good much 
overbalances the evil; the other declares that all men are ‘con- 
ceived in sin,’ and “shapen in wickedness’—that hence there is in 
every man a ‘carnal mind, which is enmity against God, which 
is not, cannot be subject to his law;’ and which so infects that 
whole soul, that ‘there dwelleth in him, in his flesh,’ in his nat- 
ural state, ‘no good thing’; but ‘every imagination of the thoughts 
of his heart is evil,’ only evil, and that ‘continually.’” “AIl who 
deny this, call it original sin, or by any other title, are heathens 
still, in the fundamental point which differences heathenism from 
Christianity.”"*° Of the faculties of the soul, the will seems to 
be the one singled out particularly by Wesley as utterly depraved. 
Although Adam before his fall possessed natural free-will to 
choose either good or evil, no man since has that power in mat- 
ters pertaining to the religious life."*° The will is free by nature 
only to choose evil.*7 It is wholly inclined to indulge the inher- 
ited corruption."** Only in concerns that lie outside of religion 
does man have freedom of will. Entire alienation, then, from 
the life of God is this view. 

Over against the view that human nature is totally depraved 
must be placed the frequent remarks that limit depravity. Here 
it would seem Wesley’s division of human nature into the moral 
image of God and the natural image, with all that this distinction 
implies, makes it possible to assert that he believed in both total 
and partial depravity. There is no doubt in his mind that so 


115 Works, I, 397-398. 17 Thid., VI, 156. 
18 Toid., VI, 127. 18 Toid., I, 428. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 33 


far as the character of the individual is concerned it is utterly 
lacking in likeness to God’s character, that is, in holiness and 
righteousness. He does leave an opening, however, for the belief 
that on the individual’s spiritual side, in that part of him which 
in Adam was the natural image of God, he is only partially de- 
praved. “Some remains of the natural image of God, as we 
are spiritual and immortal beings, are even now to be found in 
every man.’’'® In the sermon on “The Heavenly Treasure in 
Earthen Vessels,” which Wesley begins by describing human 
nature as wholly degraded, he says that a considerable portion 
of the lost image of God may be regained, although the vessel 
that contains this will stay none the less earthen in its character. 
But there will be already in human nature, when the recoverable 
image returns to it, a nucleus of divinity to which it will join 
itself. This is the remains of the lost image and it is in the 
individual before ever he becomes a Christian believer. “May 
we not include herein, first, an immaterial principle, a spiritual 
nature, endued with understanding, and affections, and a degree 
of liberty; of a self-moving, yea, and self-governing power? .. . 
And, secondly, all that is vulgarly called natural conscience? 
Implying some discernment of the difference between moral 
good and evil, with an approbation of the one, and disapproba- 
tion of the other, by an inward monitor, excusing or accusing?” 
He has no doubt, we may conclude, that some remnants of the 
understanding and affections and liberty are natural to every 
child of man; but he is uncertain whether conscience is ‘‘natural 
or superadded by the grace of God.” At any rate, it does not 
necessarily follow that because men are deeply fallen as to their 
understanding, will, and affections, there may not be enough 
reason left to be able to discern good from evil.7** In fact, 
every spirit must possess these three faculties, in some measure, 
to be a spirit. “It may be doubted whether God ever made an 
intellectual creature without all these three faculties; whether 
any spirit ever existed without them; yea, whether they are not 
119 Tind., V, 587. 


120 Thid., IT, 479. 
121 Tbid., V, 561. 


34 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


implied in the very nature of a spirit. Certain it is, that no being 
can be accountable for its actions, which has not liberty, as 
well as understanding.”*** The tract, “Thoughts Upon Neces- 
sity,’ from which this quotation is taken, has in its introductory 
word to the reader the following: “I cannot believe the noblest 
creature in the visible world to be only a fine piece of clock-work.” 
In this tract Wesley specifies his objections to determinism and 
gives his typical reasons for holding to free-will. If all man’s 
thoughts and deeds are so of necessity, that is, irresistibly, there 
can be no moral good or evil. Man would be incapable of vice 
or virtue, and could not be subject to rewards or punishments on 
any scale that is just. Future judgment would be done away 
with, and finally the divine origin of the Scriptures disproved.*”* 
In other words, moral obligation, punishment and reward, heaven 
and hell, imply freedom of the will. In short, man would not be 
man at all without it.*** 


VY. The Work of Grace in the Salvation of Man 


It is not a matter of great importance, after all, to his theory 
of salvation and education, whether partial depravity can or 
cannot be given room in his theology. For whether or not man 
has some good in him by nature, as the basis of his redemption, 
he is under the dispensation of grace, which is universal and effica- 
cious in supplying whatever deficiency may be owing to fallen 
nature. A discussion of the work of grace, as Wesley conceived 
it, in the life of man is complicated by his belief that the influ- 
ence of grace extends over every point in human life from its 
very birth. For Wesley taught that not only is salvation due to 
grace, but that the creation of Adam and the life of all people 
and their strength and everything they possess is due to the same 
power. Salvation is distinguished from the general life of the 
individual only by being the very highest blessing in the power 
of grace to confer.**® From the very hour of the original promise 
made after the fall of Adam mankind has been under the cove- 





12 Thid., VI, 208. IMT Did. | ELS 70 
123 Thid., VI, 200-212. 1% Tbid., I, 13. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 35 


nant of grace. From these statements it is readily evident 
that one has to be on his guard in reading Wesley when he is 
using the phrase “by nature.” It would seem that he is dealing 
with an abstraction. ‘There is no man that is in a state of mere 
nature,” for no one is entirely without the grace of God unless 
he has irretrievably quenched the Spirit.°’ McGiffert has sug- 
gested that Wesley and the evangelicals did not teach the imma- 
nence of God in a very strict sense, that while they emphasized 
that in the hearts and lives of believers the Spirit was imme- 
diately present, they denied it most emphatically to nature and 
humanity in general. The divine indwelling is enjoyed only by 
those possessing saving faith..** What McGiffert says may be 
true with regard to the evangelicals taken as a whole; but its 
application to Wesley should be made cautiously, for statements 
similar to those to be found grouped together in his sermon “On 
the Omnipresence of God” might be gathered together by the 
investigator from all quarters of his writings. There it is stated 
that God is “presiding over all that he has made, and governing 
atoms as well as worlds.” “We cannot believe the omnipotence 
of God, unless we believe his omnipresence, for seeing, as was 
observed before, nothing can act where it is not; if there were any 
space where God was not present, he would not be able to do any- 
thing there. Therefore to deny the omnipresence of God implies, 
likewise, the denial of his omnipotence. To set bounds to the 
one is, undoubtedly, to set bounds to the other also. Indeed, 
wherever we suppose him not to be, there we suppose all his 
attributes to be in vain. He cannot exercise there, either his jus- 
tice, or mercy; either his power or wisdom.’’?*? Such a statement 
as this ought to be effective answer also to the opinion that 
Wesley’s thinking was based on the deistic assumption that God 
having created the world in the beginning stood apart from 
it and let it run by its self-operative laws, and revealed himself 
only by miraculous intervention. Such an intervention is con- 

126 Thid., V, 204. 

127 Thid., II, 238; see also I, 110-115. 

128 McGiffert: Protestant Thought Before Kant, 171-172. Used by permission 


of Charles Scribner’s Sons. 
129 Works, II, 413-414. 


36 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


version.'*® Qn the contrary, the only way in which it could be 


said truthfully that conversion is an intervention is to say that 
God’s indwelling presence in the entire universe together with 
whatever relation he has to it, is an intervention. And this 
might justly be held on his conception of grace. But in that case 
it would be unfair—or at least redundant—to speak of particu- 
lar interventions, as, for instance, conversion. 

The point to be kept in sight in this discussion is that re- 
gardless of Wesley’s views on the extent of depravity, the force 
of it is checked by the logical outcome of his belief in grace and 
in its universal efficacy. This is the heart of Wesley’s Arminian- 
ism.'** Human nature is not determined by necessity, nor is the 
propensity to evil irresistible. By the grace ever available this 
can be resisted and conquered.*? Every person possesses the 
principle of self-determination and is a free agent, without which 
he would be “not an agent, but a patient.”*** This means not 
only that a man is free to choose God, but also that he 1s not 
forced by God to make that choice and to believe and be saved. 
He is a free agent every way. God desires the salvation of every 
soul and has fulfilled all the necessary divine conditions, flooding 
the world with light. But he leaves it to everyone to see it for 
himself and to draw nigh to it unforced.*** This fact of freedom 
to choose or reject salvation is evidence enough of a check by 
grace to total ruin and depravity. 

Wesley was aware that such a view of self-determination 
is not easy to reconcile with the foreknowledge possessed by God 
of all who throughout time would accept or reject salvation. 
And he confessed he could not reconcile it.42° All that he could 
say was that God’s knowledge could not be the cause of any indi- 
vidual’s attitude toward salvation. ‘Men are as free in believing, 
or not believing, as if he did not know it at all.”*** Likewise, 


180 McConnell, op. cit., 17., disagrees with the Author’s position. 

131 Dale, Fellowship With Christ and Other Discourses Delivered on Special 
Occasions, 224; A New History of Methodism, I, 36-37. 

132 Works, V, 562. 135 Thid., V, 592. 

183 Thid., II, 69. 1% Thid., II, 39, 

14 Thid., II, 98, 460. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE Bi 


the power wherewith good and evil actions are performed is 
directly of God, but this does not make the sinfulness or the 
goodness of the deeds God’s will or work. It is the use man 
makes of this power from his own free-will that characterizes 
him as sinful or righteous.*** So that although Wesley cannot 
explain this seeming paradox, he nevertheless feels certain that 
God cannot be the author of sin, which he would be were man 
determined beforehand, and not free.'88 And on the basis of 
this feeling he retains belief in freedom. For just as he knows 
that primary and secondary qualities, for instance, color as well 
as size and figure, are real, by the testimony of his senses, so he 
knows man to be free by the same sort of testimony. If man is 
a mere machine, none of his senses can be trusted, for it is the 
testimony of all of them, both outward and inward, that he is a 
free agent. If, therefore, he cannot trust them with respect to 
freedom, he cannot trust them respecting anything, not even 
primary or secondary qualities, and the only possible outcome is 
universal skepticism.**? 

The denial of some offset to depravity, whether by nature 
or of grace, leads to Calvinistic determinism, in which election 
by hard-and-fast decrees shifts responsibility for salvation wholly 
from the individual and rests it solely upon God. And the 
ground is entirely cut loose from aspiration and education. These 
become, as Doctor Workman points out, utterly impossible. 
“For,” he says, “if all is immutable decrees, there is neither need 
nor logic in prayer or worship; these things are but the idle beat- 
ing of the wings against the prison bars.”**° Likewise the con- 
ception of conversion as a voluntary act of self-surrender would 
be impossible. Nor would there be any justification for attempt- 
ing the work of education, when that is defined as a leading out 
of latent possibilities for good. For the less one’s beastliness were 
permitted to develop, the better it would be on such a view of 
the world. His possibilities were better kept in chains. But if 
some spark of divinity is to be found within the individual suf- 
ficient to enable him to see his own darkness and desire more 


137 Thid., V, 592. 139 Tbid., VI, 210-211. 
138 Thid., VI, 204-205. 40 4 New History of Methodism, I, 11. 


38 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


light, the way would be opened for conversion and for education. 
Wesley held to such a conception. Although human beings are 
by nature utterly corrupt, there is sufficient grace in every man 
given by the Spirit to start him off toward a quest for the higher 
life. He held that a great deal is left to the individual in finding 
salvation, although at the same time man’s utter dependence upon 
God is to be kept constantly in mind.. “It is a fact,’ says a mod- 
ern writer, “that every individual has a rudimentary moral nature 
derived from God, the Source of all goodness, and that apart 
from this ethical potentiality, to which appeal can be made, moral 
influence and training would go for nothing.”’*** This statement 
depicts Wesley’s position accurately. 

The established name that has been used in the history of 
doctrine to describe this initial influence of God in the soul of 
man is prevenient grace. Wesley usually defines it more closely 
as preventing grace. “Salvation begins with what is usually 
termed (and very properly), preventing grace; including the 
first wish to please God; the first dawn of light concerning his 
will; and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned 
against him.’’*** It is a feeling and groping after God if haply 
he might be found. It finds inclusive utterance in Paul’s doctrine, 
which is reiterated in Wesley’s writings, that you are to “work 
out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God 
who worketh in you both to will and to work.’’*** Wesley’s 
exegesis of these verses is that grace accompanies and follows 
our desires, but also goes before them and prevents them, so that 
it is God who works in us to desire the right.1** In a letter to 
John Mason, one of his preachers, he gives his opinion on this 
point. Evidently, from the nature of Wesley’s reply to him, 
Mason has been troubled about the problem of election. Wesley 
writes: “One of Mr. Fletcher's Checks considers at large the 
Calvinistic supposition, ‘that a natural man is as dead as a stone,’ 
and shows the utter falseness and absurdity of it: seeing no man 


141 Mackintosh, The Divine Initiative, 86. 
14 Works, II, 235-236; see also VI, 509. 
443 Philippians, II, 12-13. 

144 Works, V, 574- 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 39 


living is without some preventing grace; and every degree of 
grace is a degree of life.”’*° Wesley felt that sovereignty was 
not at ali taken from God, the point so much valued in Calvin- 
ism.**® Sovereignty is, rather, attributed to God, in the only 
rational way, permitting at the same time a conception of him 
which retains belief in his justice and mercy. Wesley could hold 
to the sovereignty of God only on the condition that it was not 
separated from his other attributes, chiefly his justice and his 
mercy.**? 

That which is more properly termed preventing grace is 
more popularly known, in the life of one before he becomes a 
Christian, as natural conscience. To call it this is, however, un- 
just, for it is not natural but supernatural, a gift from God, and 
is superior to all man’s natural endowments.’*® Conscience “is 
a kind of silent reasoning of the mind,” he says, quoting from a 
seventeenth-century sermon.’*® It is “the light of reason.”?°° 
“And does it not appear as soon as the understanding opens? as 
soon as reason begins to dawn?” In a Christian its office is to 
give assurance to the good life.** But in one not yet a Christian 
it is preventing grace and leads the way to his becoming a Chris- 
tian. And it is the possession of every man. “Every man has a 
greater or less measure of this, which waiteth not for the call of 
man. Everyone has, sooner or later, good desires; although the 
generality of men stifle them before they can strike deep root, or 
produce any considerable fruit. Everyone has some measure of 
that light, some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later,. 
more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world. 
And everyone, unless he be one of the small number, whose con- 
science is seared as with a hot iron, feels more or less uneasy when 
he acts contrary to the light of his own conscience. So that no 


14% Jhid., VII, 97. This refers to the saintly John Fletcher (1729-1785), 
gifted theologian and one of Wesley’s ablest preachers. Wesley indicated him 
to be his successor as leader of the Methodists, a wish not realized because of 
his prior death. See Works, VI, 687-688. 

M46 Thid., VI, 42-45. 

47 Ibid., VI, 35. See also sermon on ‘‘Free Grace,’’ I, 482-490. 

48 Thid., II, 378. 150 Thid., I, 250. 

49 Thid., II, 377. 151 Tbid., II, 376-383. 


40 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use 
the grace which he hath.’’!*? 

Summing up Wesley’s position, it may be said that he be- 
lieved in the depravity of human nature but at the same time 
joined to it an ameliorating doctrine of grace whereby every man 
born into the world is enabled to sense his pitiable condition, to 
sigh for deliverance, and to make a start toward it. Viewed 
from its origin in the Fall, character might have been hopelessly 
bad. That it has been otherwise is due to the personal interest 
of God. Wesley would doubtless agree with Professor Mackin- 
tosh that “to whatever point we retrace the story of our personal 
inclinations and decisions, behind everything else there stretches 
the prevenient love of God making ready for our good.”*** The 
whole Christian system is “a universal remedy, for a universal 
evil.”’*°* It is “God’s method of healing a soul which is thus 
diseased. Hereby the great Physician of souls applies medicines 
to heal this sickness; to restore human nature, totally corrupted 
in all its faculties.”?°° But it is essential to retain the belief in 
the depravity of man’s inmost nature. Otherwise religion is un- 
necessary as well as education. Only outward reformation would 
be necessary on any other consideration. The Christian system 
would fall at once were this foundation to be taken away.**® 
There would be no need of a cure or for any medicine if there 
were not this diseased condition. It would be useless to talk of 
a renewal in knowledge and holiness if that original condition 
had never been lost, if man were as good as Adam before his 
apostasy. And, on the other hand, that religion which does not 
aim to restore the original condition “is no other than a poor 
farce.”*°’ This is true salvation. “By salvation I mean, not 
barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or 
going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration 
of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery 
of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of 


162 Thed., II, 238. 18% Thid., I, 398; see also II, 73. 
163 Divine Initiative, 40. 156 Thid., V, 493. 
144 Works, II, 435. 87 Tbid., I, 399. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 4I 


God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and 
tht | 

In fairness to Wesley—although it is somewhat out of line 
with the purpose of this study—over against the trend of the 
argument in this chapter should be placed several of his scientific 
views as contained in the work by Bonnet, which he edited and 
circulated under the title, 4 Survey of the Wisdom of God in 
the Creation: or, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, ‘There 
can be no doubt that this work in the form issued by Wesley 
reflects honestly his accepted views, for in the Preface he says: 
“T have found occasion to retrench, enlarge, or alter every chap- 
ter, and almost every section. So that it is now, I believe, not 
only pure, containing nothing false or uncertain; but as full as 
any tract can be expected to be: and, likewise plain, clear, and 
intelligible to one of a tolerable understanding.”’*”? 

This work shows that Wesley accepted in general the revolu- 
tionary scientific hypothesis of the solar system of Copernicus 
and Isaac Newton, and that he rejected the Ptolemaic system. 
“Demonstrated,” are his words, “by unanswerable arguments 
that it could not possibly be otherwise without the utter sub- 
version of all the laws of nature.’’*® It is needless to dwell upon 
the fact that these views are not in accord with the biblical theory 
of the system of the heavens. There is no evidence that Wesley 
attempted to harmonize them. 

The attempt has been made recently to prove from statements 
in this “Survey” that Wesley accepted the essential doctrine of 
organic evolution, namely, the doctrine of the gradual and or- 
derly progression from lower forms to higher in the organic 
world. This position, it is said, is set forth clearly in the two 
chapters, “A General View of the Gradual Progression of Be- 
ings,” and “Continuation of the Gradual Progression of Beings.” 
The following statements are made by him therein: “All is meta- 
morphosis in the physical world. Forms are continually chang- 
ing. The quantity of matter alone is invariable. The same sub- 

188 Thid., V, 35. 


19 Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation, Preface. 
360 Jiid., II, 112. 


42 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


stance passes successively into three kingdoms. The same com- 
position becomes by turns a mineral,- plant, insect, reptile, fish, 
bird, quadruped, man.’’**' “By what degrees does nature raise 
herself up to man? How will she rectify this head that is always 
inclined toward the earth? How change these paws into flexible 
arms? What method will she make use of to transform these 
crooked feet into supple and skillful hands? Or how will she 
widen and extend this contracted stomach? In what manner will 
she place the breasts, and give them a roundness suitable to 
them? ‘The ape is this rough draft of man; this rude sketch an 
imperfect representation, which nevertheless bears the resem- 
blance to him, and is the last creature that serves to display the 
admirable progression of the works of God.’*® “But mankind 
have their gradations, as well as the other productions of our 
globe. There is a prodigious number of continued links between 
the most perfect man and the ape.’’*® 

If Wesley, accepting the evolutionary hypothesis, considered 
it to be in conflict with the Scripture doctrine of creation, or 
with theistic philosophy, he failed to record such an opinion 
anywhere. On the contrary, this method of creation seemed 
to him to show the wisdom of God, “even the manifold wis- 
dom which is able to answer the same ends by so various 
teans.. 005 

These passages should be interpreted in the light of Wesley’s 
writings as a whole, and not Wesley’s other voluminous writ- 
ings in the light of these brief passages. There is not the slight- 
est evidence in anything else he ever wrote that he favored the 
doctrine of evolution. On the contrary, he asserted consistently 
his belief in the account in Genesis of the origin and creation of 
man. It is safe to say, therefore, that in endorsing these state- 
ments from Bonnet he did not mean to imply a belief in a process 
of evolution, Darwinian or otherwise, of one form of life from 
another. Bishop Warren A. Candler, in a sane article answering 


161 Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation, II, 226. 
162 Thid., II, 210. 
163 Jhid., II, 213. 
164 Tbid., Preface. 


THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 43 


&é 


the attempts to make Wesley an evolutionist, writes: 
All that Bonnet taught and all that Wesley accepted was that 
God had created all things, especially living things, in a series of 
gradations or scales,” 


1% “‘Tohn Wesley and Evolution.’’ Christian Advocate, General Organ of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, August 7, 1925, p. 1093. 


CHAPTER II 
THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 


I. Repentance 


In Wesley’s summary of his doctrinal position, it will be 
remembered, the porch of religion is original sin, and the door 
is faith. “The doctrine of original sin, and faith grounded 
thereon, is the only foundation of true piety.”* In his ablest 
theological writing, dn Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and 
Religion, which Doctor Simon aptly calls his ‘““Apologia,’’* Wes- 
ley justifies the religion he commends on the ground that it is 
agreeable to reason, if by reason is meant the eternal reason, 
the essential nature of things, the nature of God and the nature 
of man. Christianity is suited to the nature of God, for it begins 
in knowing him and in going on to love him and all mankind. 
It is also agreeable to the nature of man, for its starting point is 
the knowledge of what human nature really is—“‘foolish, vicious, 
miserable.” It points the remedy for this condition and culmi-_ 
nates in restoring God and man to their right relations to each 
other, as Father and son, Lord and servant.* The knowledge of 
God and the knowledge of self represent but two sides of one and 
the same thing. They are complementary. To know God is to 
be disillusioned about oneself. To know oneself is to be aware 
of the deep contrast existing between God and man. Real knowl- 
edge of either leads to deep dissatisfaction and striving to achieve 
redemption. Religion is the love of God and of mankind.* 
You must love him before you can be holy.® But you cannot love 
him until you know he loves you.® But before you can know him 
you must come into touch with Christ. And before you are 
1 Works, V, 551. 

2Simon: John Wesley and the Methodist Socteties, 153. This is the second 
volume thus far completed in the life of Wesley which Doctor Simon is now 
writing and which is to be the standard life of Wesley. The first volume is 
called John Wesley and the Religious Socteties. 
3 Works, V, 11-12. 5 Thid., I, 88. 
4 Tbid., V, 5. 6 Jbid., V, 20. 
44 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 45 


willing to do that you must be convinced that you are corrupt. 
“The power of godliness consists in the love of God and man; 
this is heavenly and substantial religion. But no man can possi- 
bly ‘love his neighbor as himself’ till he loves God; and no man 
can possibly love God till he truly believes in Christ; and no man 
truly believes in Christ till he is deeply convinced of his own sin- 
fulness, guiltiness, and helplessness. But this no man ever was, 
neither can be, who does not know he has a corrupt nature.’’? 
Man since the Fall has been diseased with atheism. He is unable 
to know God in any but a dim and superficial way. And being 
unacquainted with the effulgence of the Divine, he takes pride in 
his own miserable sinful condition as though it were itself mag- 
nificent. Unless somehow an awareness of the true state of things 
can break through his depraved understanding, he will never 
long for anything better. Self-knowledge, therefore, is the sine 
qua non of the religious life. Without it there can be no sal- 
vation. With it salvation is practically inevitable.® 

Wesley’s constant mention of this condition leaves no room 
to doubt that he considered it important almost above everything 
else. To know oneself as shapen in wickedness and conceived in 
sin and as having added to that ever since the ability to discern 
good from evil, and therefore guilty of eternal death, is to build 
upon the Rock spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount. For only 
then will one mourn his condition and appropriate to himself the 
salvation that is through Christ by faith.? Not even the grace of 
God can have effect in a life which lacks this acquaintance with 
himself. Wesley criticized the sacraments of the Church of Rome 
on this score in his tract, Popery Calmly Considered. <A sacra- 
ment is not an act of pure magic through which grace is con- 
ferred simply by the performance of the act or by the utterance 
of words. The being merely passive before the influence of 
grace, the setting aside of all hindrances to its operation, is not the 
sole condition. “It is not enough that we do not put an obstruc- 
tion. In order to our receiving grace, there is also required pre- 
vious instruction, true repentance, and a degree of faith.” A 


7 Ibid., V, 575. 9 Ibid., I, 304. 
8 Jixd., VII, 142. 10 Ibid., V, 810. 


46 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


section from his own experience illustrates what he had in mind 
when insisting upon the necessity of self-knowledge. From the 
time of his ordination in 1725 to 1729 he preached much but with 
little success. The reason he gives is that he took it too much 
as established that his hearers already believed the gospel and 
did not need repentance. It was not until he insisted upon the 
need of tearing away the corrupt foundation of the human heart, 
and laying Christ down as the only sure base of the religion of 
the heart, that multitudes cried out for salvation." 

It will be remembered that the root of Wesley’s objection 
to Taylor’s treatise on the “Doctrine of Original Sin,” which set 
forth the doctrine of human perfection, was that it overthrows 
the ground on which true spiritual worship and primitive Scrip- 
tural Christianity stand, for it blocks the way to the knowledge 
of the real state men are in.1* This was also one cause of his 
dislike for “the great triumvirate,’ Rousseau, Voltaire, and 
Hume, and their religion of humanity.* So much have men 
of letters in England, France, and Germany extolled humanity 
that a revealed religion has been deemed unnecessary. But this 
religion of humanity is simple atheism.** Panegyrics on the dig- 
nity of human nature have persuaded people to think well of 
themselves, to regard themselves as wise, virtuous, and happy, 
until it is now quite unfashionable to speak at all to the dispar- 
agement of human nature.” He discloses his opinion of Rous- 
seau, and incidentally of Voltaire, in an entry in his Journal 
after reading an essay on the “Intellectual and Active Powers of 
Man” by Dr. Thomas Reid, founder of the Scottish School. His 
greatest objection to that book was the author’s “exquisite want 
of judgment in so admiring that prodigy of self-conceit, Rous- 
seau—a shallow but supercilious infidel, two degrees below Vol- 
taire! Is it possible that a man who admires him can admire the 
Bible?’”’?® Again in his Journal of a few years previous he voices 
the same reaction to his vanity and self-conceit, and his consid- 


1 Thid., V, 330-331. 

12 Ibid., V, 649-650; see also Works, V, 492-493, and Journal, III, 374, 520. 
18 Jiid., II, 433. % Jbid., I, 392; II, 473. 

4 Ibid., II, 433. 16 Journal, VI, 22-23. , 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 47 


eration of Voltaire as belonging to the same category.*” It would 
be hardly fair to Wesley to neglect to mention that in these judg- 
ments he shared the views of other great men of his generation. 
Doctor Curnock, the editor of the Standard Edition of Wesley’s 
Journal, says that Warburton, the Bishop of Gloucester and 
Wesley’s open enemy, characterized Rousseau as a “frank luna- 
tic.’*8 He also says that Dr. Samuel Johnson gave Boswell his 
opinion that both Voltaire and Rousseau were bad men, and that 
he never doubted that Rousseau was mad.*® Although Wesley 
despised Rousseau, the two men were nevertheless quite near each 
other on one point. Both were dissatisfied with the present state 
of society and believed there had been a departure from the ideal 
conditions in which man had been created. Of Hume Wesley 
asked, did he “know the heart of man? No more than a worm or 
a beetle does.”’*° It was just at this point that Wesley diverged 
from these champions of humanity. They were ignorant of the 
corrupt nature of the human heart, and being ignorant they 
were enemies of its transformation, particularly as the road to 
it is set forth in the Christian revelation. The blindness of these 
men, however, did not alter Wesley’s opinion that ordinary folk 
could be made to understand their sinfulness and to heed the 
appeal of the gospel. 

The term Wesley uses to cover the knowledge and conviction 
of one’s sinful condition is “repentance.” It was said above that, 
roughly speaking, he used the terms “original sin’ and “repent- 
ance” interchangeably, and a discussion of the exact relationship 
between them has thus far been omitted. A more detailed refer- 
ence to their correspondence is here in order. Repentance is of 
two kinds or degrees. There is a repentance before one has re- 
ceived the gospel, and there is a repentance afterward persisting 
in the life of the believer. This latter kind will be mentioned in 
its proper place later. The first “is a conviction of our utter sin- 
fulness, and guiltiness, and helplessness; and which preceded our 

17 Tbed., V, 352-353- 
18 Ibid., V, 353, note I, cited by editor. 
19 Thid., VI, 23, note I, cited by editor; Journal, V, 352, note 2, cited by 


editor. 
20 Works, II, 477. 


48 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


receiving that kingdom of God, which our Lord observes, is 
‘within us.’’”’? Without it that kingdom cannot be entered.” It 
is the porch to the Kingdom. “First, ‘repent’; that is, know 
yourselves. This is the first repentance previous to faith; even 
conviction, or self-knowledge. Awake then, thou that sleepest. 
Know thyself to be a sinner, and what manner of sinner thou 
art. Know that corruption of thy inmost nature, whereby thou 
art very far gone from original righteousness.’’** Wesley’s 
discourses “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount” touch 
this matter at the very start. It is not merely coincidence that 
what he conceived to be the porch to salvation and the opening 
words of the Sermon on the Mount should so well agree. Wes- 
ley’s observation is “that real Christianity always begins in pov- 
erty of spirit... . The foundation of all is poverty of spirit: 
here, therefore, our Lord begins. ‘Blessed,’ saith he, “are the 
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’” The poor 
in spirit are not those who love poverty and are free from the 
covetousness of riches, but they are, rather, those who through 
‘their acquaintance with themselves are convinced of their sin- 
fulness, guiltiness, and helplessness, and who in deep humility 
experience sorrow. To repent, then, is to realize your fallen 
state and to feel the wrath of God abiding on you.” 

As desirable and necessary as are the conviction of sinful- 
ness and the attitude of penitence, man is unable of himself to 
experience them without the grace of God. No part of the Chris- 
tian work of redemption is isolated from the power and influence 
of God. Every step is due to grace, even the first tendency toward 
life and salvation. Alone man is unable to discover his condition 
because of the wickedness and deceitfulness of his heart.2* Nor 
can anyone else persuade him to repent.”” God alone is equal to 
it. By his preventing grace he gives a man a faint degree of 
self-knowledge and sensibility toward God. He continues it “bh 
convincing grace, usually in Scripture termed repentance; which 

41 Foid., I, 116. 
2 Thid., I, 64. 
*3 Tbid., I, 181-182; also Notes Upon the New Testament, 19. 


*4 Tind., II, 475. 
% Ibid., II, 421. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 49 


brings a larger measure of self knowledge, and a further deliv- 
erance from the heart of stone.”*° 

True Christian humility, which is self-knowledge, heals the 
deadly disease of pride.** For the conviction of sinfulness and 
guilt together with the recognition of one’s utter inability to help 
himself or to think or do any good thing apart from the power 
of God, is hardly compatible with levity of temper or behavior, 
or with a desire for praise.** To put on sackcloth and sit in dust 
and ashes would express the more fitting attitude.*? Particular 
watchfulness against this disease is enjoined; as it was one of 
the two first evils to cause the downfall of man, so it is one of 
the last to be rooted out.°® In this light Wesley’s persistent 
opposition to all adornment of the body with pearls, gold, and fine 
clothes becomes clear and rational. He objected to extravagance 
in these things for one reason because every needless expenditure 
is so much food and clothing taken away from the poor and 
needy. Its sinfulness lies in that it “is the blood of the poor,’’** 
But there is another reason why these things are to be condemned. 
They arouse pride in those who are free from it and feed it in 
those in whom it already exists. “Experience shows that fine 
clothes have a natural tendency to make a man sick of pride. . 
Therefore, all that desire to be clothed with humility, abstain 
from that poison.”*? Not only pride, but also a whole riot of 
evils follows in its wake. The godly will, therefore, take care to 
adorn themselves more abundantly with good works.** 

Wesley for the same reason also often preached daringly 
against riches. He warned the Methodists who were fast increas- 
ing in wealth that Christianity tends to disintegrate by reason of 
the worldly success that it promotes. The very qualities of 
sobriety, industry, frugality, lead to outward prosperity and 
beget riches. “And riches naturally beget pride, love of the 
world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity.’’** 
And they shift confidence and trust from God to themselves.*° 


26 Thid., II, 235-236. 31 Tbid., II, 262; V, 132. 

27 Tbid., I, 398; also VI, 770. 32 Thid., II, 260. 

28 Tbid., II, 125; VI, 764, 770. 33 Jbid., II, 262. 

tall oc Fs Sa WBS Be 34 Jbid., II, 441; see also II, 398-400. 


30 Tbid., II, 291, 473. % Jbid., II, 397. 


50 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The best possible safeguard is a habit he himself long practiced 
and often recommended. It is epigrammatically summarized in 
his familiar formula, “Get all you can, save all you can, but give 
all you can.’’* 


II. Justification by Faith and Regeneration 


The individual who thus convinced of his original sin passes 
the porch of repentance is not yet born again and cannot be said 
to have entered the edifice of religion. He must pass through 
the door of faith. Although Wesley asserts that repentance is 
prior to faith, in his writings it is difficult to separate these two 
sharply and to say which is prior, for they merge into each other 
almost imperceptibly. He who comes to God in faith must fix 
his eye on all that is bad in himself and sincerely feel a lack of all 
that is good.** But it must be noted that this is the attitude of 
mingled faith and penitence. Ultimately the question as to 
whether faith or repentance is first cannot be settled without deter- 
mining more closely which kind of faith is meant. For Wesley 
held to two distinct kinds of faith, or three, if the first is divided 
into its two degrees. It might be more strictly accurate to say 
that he held to one genus of faith, of which there are two species. 
The definition of faith he once called the most comprehensive 
that ever was or could be given, including every kind from the 
lowest to the highest, is that found in his sermon on the text, 
“Without faith, it is impossible to please him” (Heb. 11. 6). 
There he says, “It is a divine ‘evidence and conviction of 
things not seen’: of things which are not seen now, whether they 
are visible or invisible in their own nature. Particularly, it is a 
divine evidence and conviction of God, and of the things of 
God.”*® The different shades of meaning that Wesley gave to 
faith are made to harmonize with this definition. 

Now, faith is needed because by it alone can the invisible, 
spiritual world be known. For the senses are helpless and the 
reason but partially able to comprehend it. Wesley’s starting- 





3% Journal, VII, 372, note 2, cited by editor. 
37 Works, I, 52. 
38 Thid., II, 383. 


THE SALVATION. OF ADULTS 51 


point here is an application of Locke’s position that the mind has 
no innate principles.*® Whatever is presented to the mind and 
used in thinking must be an idea, and to be without ideas is to 
lack both sense and reason.*® Since, however, ideas are not in- 
nate but come originally from the senses, if spiritual things are 
to be discerned there must be senses adapted to them. The nat- 
ural, external senses, even the most excellent of them, are capable 
of bringing to the mind data only from the external visible 
world, and are incapable of discerning the more delicate objects 
of the invisible, spiritual world. If these are to be seen, it is 
necessary to have the internal, spiritual senses of the soul opened 
—the hearing ear, and the seeing eye.*? The reason is under the 
same disability and can render neither judgment nor decision in 
spiritual matters, for it is dependent upon the ideas furnished by 
the senses for the ground it stands upon and the materials it 
works with.*? Just as when the natural sight is lacking neither 
the ear nor any other sense organ can furnish the reason with 
ideas which are only visibly received, so if the spiritual senses 
are lacking or unawakened, the reason has no material with which 
it can reach spiritual things, for the external senses are unable to 
supply it with ideas of a spiritual nature.4* The only way to 
know the spiritual things of God is to use the faculties supplied 
by faith which God can open.** 

By what is here said it is not difficult to understand Wes- 
ley’s claim that the religion he advocated was agreeable with 
reason. It was charged in his day that all who would become 
Methodists must renounce their reason. To this he replied, “It 
is a fundamental principle with us, that to renounce reason is to 
renounce religion; that religion and reason go hand in hand; and 
that all irrational religion is false religion.”’*® Particularly did 
he apply this verdict to Christianity. Huis tract, dn Earnest Ap- 
peal to Men of Reason and Religion, published in 1744, deals 
with two classes of men. It strives to win the sympathy and 


39 Thid., VII, 445; V, 12. 4 [bid., V, 12-13. 


40 Jiid., VII, 177-178. A 'lind., V,.33¢ 
SiThid. ll, 424: V;.12. % Ihid., VII, 499. 


@ bid. 


52 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


support of all genuinely religious men to the Methodist movement. 
But it also tries to commend the Christian system to the Deists 
who were opposing Wesley and making havoc of the Christian 
revelation itself as being contrary to reason. Its position is stated 
in the words, that an unreasonable man “is no more a Christian 
than he is an angel. So far as he departs from true, genuine 
reason, so far he departs from Christianity.’*® In this tract he 
also shows his thorough disgust with the treatise by the Rev. 
William Dodwell, of Welby, Christiamty not Founded on Argu- 
ment, pointing to its fallacies, sophistry, and blasphemy in no 
uncertain terms.*” Wesley was “utterly ashamed” of Luther’s 
Comment on the Epistle to the Galatians, condemning the author 
severely for decrying reason as hostile to the gospel of Christ. 
Contrary to this position, Wesley says reason, which is nothing 
but the power of apprehending, judging, and discoursing, is not 
to be berated as a whole any more than seeing, hearing, or 
feeling.*® 

Now, the uses of reason are many. Besides being of great 
help in matters of the present world, in secular affairs, it is of 
help in things pertaining to the spiritual world, enabling us to 
understand the Scriptures and the whole foundation and super- 
structure of religion. Among these are the nature of repentance, 
faith, the new birth, and the tempers of holiness. Reason, then, 
as far as it goes, is not by any means to be despised. ‘When, 
therefore, you despise or depreciate reason, you must not imagine 
you are doing God service; least of all are you promoting the 
cause of God, when you are endeavoring to exclude reason out 
of religion. Unless you willfully shut your eyes, you cannot but 
see of what service it is both in laying the foundation of true 
religion, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and in raising 
the superstructure. You see it directs us in every point, both of 
faith and practice.”*® While it cannot discover any adequate 
cure for the diseases of the soul, it can give the individual the 
impression of his desperate condition.°° But after all due credit 


 Jhid., V, II. 49 Works, II, 132. 
47 Thid., V, 13. 50 Jbid., II, 68. 
48 Journal, II, 467. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 53 


is given to reason, it nevertheless needs to be supplemented if true 
religion is to be experienced. For although the Holy Spirit works 
through the mind in producing every degree of faith that is 
wrought in man,*’ reason itself can produce neither faith, nor 
hope, nor love, nor happiness. It cannot produce the actual expe- 
rience of the things concerning which it gives information.™* 
This is the sphere of faith. 

In general, the three kinds of faith differ somewhat in both 
degree and quality. The lowest faith is a mere recognition of the 
existence of the invisible world and of the things of God. Such 
as hold this faith believe in the being and attributes of God and 
that he created and governs the world. In varying degrees a 
Deist, a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a heathen may be said to have 
such a faith.°* Faith of a higher kind is a speculative assent to 
that particular truth of God that he gave Christ to save the world, 
and that Christ does save. This, however, is a dead faith.°* The 
kind of faith covered by these two definitions, namely, the faith 
that is simply an evidence that there is some One to come to in 
repentance, may be said properly to precede repentance. The 
third and living faith, faith in the true Christian sense, is that 
by which comes justification before God. It is a sort of in- 
tuition,”’ a disposition of the heart, ‘‘a sure confidence which a 
man hath in God, that through the merits of Christ, Ais sins are 
forgiven, and he reconciled to the favor of God; and, in conse- 
quence hereof, a closing with him, and cleaving to him, as our 
‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,’ or, in 
one word, our salvation.’** It is the personal appropriation of 
Christ as distinguished from the belief in his availability. And 
it is saving faith, according to Wesley, because the conviction that 
the love and death of Christ was for me carries the irresistible 
conviction that I am reconciled with God. The one cannot be 
without the other. It is only when faith of this sort is held that 
the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer.’ At the 


61 Jbid., VII, 109. & Jiid., II, 72. 
8 Thid., II, 129-132. 56 Tbid., I, 14-15. 
8 Jbid., II, 384. 87 Tbhid., I, 169-177. 


 Tbid., II, 385. 


54 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


very time a person believes in the righteousness of Christ it is 
imputed to him, for “faith and the righteousness of Christ are 
inseparable.’ The first two kinds of faith merely define the 
field where the remedy for sin is to be found. The third kind is 
itself the medicine given to men to heal their sickness.°° 

The distinction is more finely brought out in Wesley’s use 
of the terms “faith of a servant” and ‘‘faith of a son,” a distinc- 
tion often employed, but elaborated at length in his sermon “On 
the Discoveries of Faith.” After saying that the conviction of 
an evil nature and of a thoroughly evil life, leading very properly 
to cringing fear of punishment, “implies a species of faith,” he 
calls his hearers to observe that it is a point of great importance 
“that this faith is only the faith of a servant, and not the faith 
of a son.”® A servant is aware of spiritual things that belong 
to salvation, but he has not experienced them. His faith does not 
get beyond the fear of God. On the other hand, he who has the 
faith of a son has passed from the bondage of fear into the spirit 
of adoption and has experienced and appropriated salvation 
through Christ. He has become a child of God.** Wesley con- 
fesses that when first he and his associates preached the doctrine 
of salvation by faith they did not enough appreciate the points 
in common between a servant and a child of God. One who could 
not say with certainty that his sins were forgiven was set down 
forthwith as a child of the devil. Years of experience, however, 
taught him that such servants were acceptable unto God, and he 
therefore pressed them to strive for and expect sonship. Whereas 
before by this attitude he was “apt to make sad the hearts of those 
whom God had not made sad,” he now encouraged them to be 
thankful for what they were already and at the same time to be 
dissatisfied until they became sons.® 

On this point Wesley could speak out of the sadness of his 
own past. Up to the spiritual crisis of conversion in his own life, 
in May, 1738, he firmly believed that he was not a Christian. 
On the voyage home from Georgia he put himself through a 





58 Thid., I, 171. 61 Jbiid., II, 409-410. 
59 Thid., I, 149. 6 Thid., II, 385-386. 
60 Jbid., II, 409. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 55 


severe cross-examination. Upon landing in London he set down 
in his Journal his impressions of his spiritual status. “I, who 
went to America to convert others, was never myself converted 
to God.”® He bluntly admits that he was “a child of wrath.’ 
He had faith, but it was of a dreary, uncomforting sort. In 
after years, when he corrected and re-edited his Journals, he made 
several amendments to these statements. His comment on the 
record that he was never converted is: “I am not sure of this.’’® 
To the earlier entry that he was “a child of wrath” he joined “I 
believe not.”®’ He also described his later conception of his 
earlier faith by saying: “I had even then the faith of a servant, 
though not that of a son.”®® What he yearned for and what his 
conversion gave him was the faith that justifies. “The faith I 
want is ‘a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the 
merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the 
favor of God.’ . . . I want that faith which none can have with- 
out knowing that he hath it.”®? And this according to the revision 
of the Journal is “the faith of a son.”’’° This conversion expe- 
rience altered his whole conception of faith, and from that time 
on he described it according to its definition of a personal appro- 
priation. The change in his use of the term is concretely illus- 
trated by his sermon on “The Circumcision of the Heart.” When 
in 1733 he preached it in Saint Mary’s, before the University of 
Oxford, he defined faith in the second sense. But when he pub- 
lished it in 1748, ten years after his conversion, he added the third 
meaning as the true Christian meaning.” 

There are many statements in Wesley’s writings that sum 
up his position on this subject, but none that connect the points in 
his system thus far treated in a more illuminating manner than 
the following section from “A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason 
and Religion” : “Without faith we cannot be saved, for we cannot 
rightly serve God unless we love him. And we cannot love him 
unless we know him; neither can we know him unless by faith. 


68 Journal, I, 422. 88 Jiid., I, 423, note I. 
« Thid., I, 423. 69 Thid., I, 424. 

% Tiid., I, 424. 70 Jiid., I, 424, note If. 
6 Thid., I, 422, note 2. 1 Works, I, 149. 


67 Ihid., I; 423, note 2. 


56 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Therefore, salvation by faith is only, in other words, the love of 
God by the knowledge of God; or the recovery of the image of 
God, by a true, spiritual acquaintance with him.”” 

At the moment the individual receives justification, or sal- 
vation, by faith, he is born again, or regenerated. Neither of 
these experiences precedes the other in order of time; but in order 
of thinking justification is first. Justification does not have the 
same meaning as regeneration, but describes the changed status 
of the individual in the sight of God, whereas regeneration de- 
scribes the new life begun in the individual. Justification implies 
a relative change, relating to the great work God does for the 
individual, in forgiving his sins, delivering him from his guilt, 
and restoring him to the favor of God as a son. Regeneration, 
on the other hand, is a real change which God works 1m the indi- 
vidual. It renews his fallen nature into the image of God, chang- 
ing him from a sinner to a saint and breaking the power of sin.” 
The experience here described as the new birth is ordinarily 
known as conversion. Wesley sometimes calls the experience by 
this term. But he was loath to do so, for he found it but rarely 
used in the New Testament. 

In the thought of Wesley the new birth is not merely an out- 
ward change that leads to an exact performance of religious and 
social duties. It is a new disposition, an inward transformation 
into the mind that was in Christ.” The bent of the nature is 
changed. Inward sinfulness changes to inward holiness, and 
the diseases of nature are arrested. The love of the world gives 
place to the love of God, pride changes to humility, self-will 
merges into the will of God, and sensual tempers become spiritual. 
The change is as great as that of the body when it is born into the 
world.’® Indeed, the analogy between the spiritual birth and the 
natural birth is very close. Just as the infant in the prenatal state 
is excluded from the life of the world, so man in the natural state 
is shut off from contact with the spiritual world. As the bodily 
senses in the infant are dormant until birth, so the spiritual senses 


72 Tbid., V, 35. 7% Thid., I, 403-404. 
73 Tbtd., I, 109, 162, 399. 76 Ibid., I1, 389-390. 
%4 Ibid., V, 368. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 57 


are asleep in the individual until he is born again of the Spirit. 
In both instances there is properly no life until the moment of 


birth.” 


Ill. Sanctification 


But repentance and justification by faith are merely the first 
principles of Christianity, says Wesley, borrowing an expression 
from Paul. They are merely the foundation of piety. They are 
not religion, but the threshold of it, the preparation for it. More 
is required of the individual for his eternal salvation than the 
pardon and rebirth received at justification. He needs sanctifi- 
cation.’* Quite frequently Wesley uses the terms “piety,” “holi- 
ness,” “real religion,” “Christian perfection,” and “sanctification” 
interchangeably, and does not distinguish between them in 
meaning. 

The doctrine of perfection was much misunderstood in Wes- 
ley’s day, and even afterward. It was objected that he meant 
by it something different from the teaching of the church as found 
in her Liturgy. Wesley replied that “it is exactly the same which 
every clergyman prays for every Sunday: ‘Cleanse the thoughts 
of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may 
perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name.’’’ And 
he made frequent reference to this prayer as the test of his teach- 
ing on perfection. As a matter of fact, the cause for objection 
came from an imaginary ideal which was thought to represent 
his position.8° The mistake was somewhat justified, for Wesley 
used the word rather carelessly and gave it a different connotation 
from that which it commonly holds as descriptive of a life lived 
accurately “according to the absolute moral law.’’** He guarded 
his use of it by calling it Christian Perfection. But even so to 
harmonize his statements about it is an impossibilty.*? He claimed 
' to have no especial fondness for the term, and that it rarely 
Dabs T, 402408; 79 Tid., VI, 196. 

"8 Tbtd,, Vi, 201, 264; 275. 80 Joid., VI, 504. 
81 Stevens: A History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, 
Called Methodism, II, 412. See also Works, I, 355-358; II, 168; VI, 127, 501, 


531-532. 
8 Curtis: The Christian Faith, 378. 


58 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


occurred in his preaching or writing except when he was driven 
to use it in controversy.** He preferred the words “holiness” 
and “‘sanctification.” 

Many have been kept from desiring entire sanctification and 
from striving for it by the mischievous opinion that when one is 
justified he is wholly sanctified. On the contrary, the process of 
transformation is but begun. The diseases of his nature are not 
wholly cured, the power of sin is not entirely broken, the corrupt 
nature has not been completely supplanted. To think otherwise 
is to destroy the desire for further healing and growth.8* What 
growth is to birth, sanctification is to justification. But although 
sanctification is a more advanced stage in the Christian life than 
justification, it is not totally different from it in nature. The 
characteristic mark of all stages of the Christian life is holiness. 
And there is but one kind of holiness, and that is love having 
unhindered and uninterrupted rule of the individual. The dif- 
ference between holiness in justification and in sanctification lies 
only in the difference in the degree of love. This love branches 
out in two directions, toward God and toward all mankind for 
God’s sake.®° The one is inward righteousness, the other out- 
ward. The first expresses itself through “works of piety,” the 
second through “works of mercy.” The life which possesses true 
religion will, through the sheer love of God and the pious dis- 
position of the heart, naturally and spontaneously love whenever 
possible to worship him in public and in private, to consult his 
Word, and to commune with him through the sacrament of the 
Lord’s Supper. Such a life will also through a love for all man- 
kind engage in works of mercy as naturally as in works of piety. 
It will, indeed, be more zealous for these than for acts of de- 
votion.*® 
8 Works, VI, 534. 

84 Thid., I, 124-125. 

8 Wesley: Instructions for Children, 126. From Vol. XXIV of The Works 
of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Bristol, 1771-1774, 32 Vols. In this edition of 
Wesley’s works it is entitled Instructions for Christians, the caption given to it 
when it was republished. See Green: The Works of John and Charles Wesley. A 
Bibliography. No. 174. In this dissertation this work is referred to by its first 


name. 


% Works, II, 293. 


PH SALVATION-OF ADULTS 59 


For Wesley the ethical nature of the pious life was the chief 
interest.87 Probably no man in England in the eighteenth cen- 
tury insisted more upon good works than Wesley. And many 
thought that he was contradicting his position of justification by 
faith alone. His answer to one such charge was: “I do as 
strongly insist on them as on faith. But each in its own order.’’®8 
That order is faith and then works, No merit or claim of works 
is necessary in order to receive justification from God.*® Asa 
matter of fact, no work that the individual can do before his 
justification can possibly be good, but has the nature of evil, 
because of his corruption and depravity which causes him to sin 
at every breath. It is only ignorance of the imputation of the 
righteousness of Christ to the believer through the covenant of 
grace that makes him trust stupidly in the ability of his own 
outward righteousness to purchase his redemption.2° Wesley 
learned for himself through twenty years’ use of good works as 
commutations the futility of such a trust.°* And yet although 
present salvation is not conditioned by such works, future sal- 
vation is, as well as continuance in the state of justification.” 
Good works are the fruit of faith. Man is therefore justified by 
faith that is alone, and yet is not alone.** Solitary religion is 
not to be found in the gospel of Christ. It “knows of no reli- 
gion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. ‘Faith working 
by love’ is the length and breadth and depth and height of Chris- 
tian perfection.” 

When holiness is thus defined as love to God and man, there 
is no difficulty in seeing that there can be differences in the degree 
with which it reigns in people, or in the same individual at differ- 
ent times. Wesley held that “perfection of kinds and perfection 
of degrees” is a proper distinction. “This I term sanctification 
(which is both an instantaneous and a gradual work), or per- 
‘fection, the being perfected in love, filled with love, which still 


87 McGiffert: Protestant Thought Before Kant, 167. Used by permission of 
Charles Scribner’s Sons. 


88 Works, V, 287. 2 Thid., V, 275, 301. 
a8 1i8., V7. % Tbid., V, 440; VI, 716. 
eo 141.6 3,585 Ny 27 5¢ % Thid., VII, 593. 


% Tbid., VI, 628. % Ibid., VI, 535. 


60 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


admits of a thousand degrees.’°® His meaning is brought out 
in his use of the distinction found in 1 John 5. 18 between little 
children in Christ, young men, and fathers.°’ Beginners in the 
Christian life are, in Paul’s expression, “babes in Christ.”°° The 
young men are more mature Christians. The fathers are fully 
grown up.*? The holiness of a beginner in the Christian way is 
mixed with contrary tempers and his faith is weak. Considerable 
of the natural man still remains in him. But as he matures into 
young manhood he grows in grace and increases in holiness. His 
life becomes more consistent and harmonious. In him there is 
less of evil mixed with good than formerly. When the change is 
complete he has become a father in Christ. He is now not in 
the least a “divided self.” Nor has he any doubt of the accom- 
plishment of the change in his nature. Love has now complete 
rule of his life, of his whole soul and mind and strength.’ Yet 
through all this gradual change from the beginner on to the 
father in Christ it is possible for the individual to avoid com- 
mitting sin, and by the time he reaches maturity of Christian 
experience it is possible for him to avoid even evil thoughts and 
tempers.’°t To make clear his meaning that perfection is a grow- 
ing experience in holiness, both gradual and instantaneous, of the 
same nature throughout but found in different degrees, Wesley 
employs the analogy of death. The body does not actually die 
until the soul separates from it, although it may be wasting away 
from illness over a considerable stretch of time. So the regener- 
ate man may not be really dead to sin and alive to righteousness 
until a particular moment, although he may be dying to sin and 
growing in grace over a period of time. In fact, spiritual growth 
is to be expected not only as long as there is life, but even through- 
out eternity..°* “Entire holiness does not exclude growth.’ 

Much of the perplexity aroused by this doctrine of holiness, 
or perfection, vanishes if it be remembered that what Wesley 
stresses is not the perfection of human nature but the control of it. 


% Jhd., VII, 71. 100 Thid., II, 221-222. 
97 Ibid., II, 221-222; Journal, II, 355. ' Ldid., I, 358-359, 365. 
98 Thid., II, 184. 1022 Thid., VI, 505. 


99 Tbhid., I, 358; II, 221-222, 410. 108 Thid., V, 573. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 61 


“Christian perfection, therefore, does not imply (as some men 
seem to have imagined) an exemption either from ignorance, or 
mistake, or infirmities, or temptations.’’*°* In spite of all that the 
individual can do his nature will remain evil, and his heart still 
have a tendency to sin. The diseases of nature, self-will, pride, 
and idolatry will not be supplanted.*°’ But to have sin does not 
mean that the individual must commit sin.°° He can keep this 
sinful nature down and conquer it so far that it does not prevail. 
As long as this is done, the individual may be said to experience 
holiness and perfection.1°" But that he has the experience is not 
a guarantee that he will retain it. 

In order to the continued experience of holiness it is neces- 
sary for the individual to “keep himself.” Wesley here uses the 
conception in I John 5. 18, that only those who keep themselves 
do not commit sin.*°? That is to say, they must be constantly on 
guard against sin and practice the power of Christ. Two of 
Wesiey’s sermons, “Sin in Believers” and “The Repentance of 
Believers,” illuminate this point. Their very titles are suggestive. 
The teaching of the first sermon is that although the Christian 
is a new creature at his regeneration, yet in him there exist to the 
end of his life two contrary principles at enmity with each other, 
the flesh and the spirit, nature and grace, making necessary an 
unremitted warfare.“*° The companion sermon follows this 
teaching with the logical application that repeated repentance and 
faith are therefore necessary. These “are full as necessary, in 
order to our continuance and growth in grace, as the former faith 
and repentance were, in order to our entering into the kingdom 
of God.” By this second repentance the believer comes to feel 
the conviction that there is sin and guilt still remaining within 
him. But by his faith power is received through Christ to over- 
come and to advance in perfection..** For the more the Chris- 
tian grows in grace, the greater is his insight into the meaning of 
sin and the desperateness of his condition without the power and 


104 Johid., I, 358. 108 Thid., I, 359; V, 18; VI, 536. 
105 Totd., II, 476. 109 Thed...V, 18. 
106 Joid., VI, 625. 110 Jozd., I, 108ff. 


107 Thid., I, 355-368; IL, 476. 11 Thid., I, 124. 


62 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


righteousness of Christ, and the more conscious is he of his need 
of justification through Christ. His condition is such that even 
after his regeneration he never gets beyond the need of the con- 
stant atonement of Christ.1’* And his growth, just as his rebirth, 
is marked by repeated cycles of repentance and faith. 

From this it is seen that Wesley held a lofty conception of 
holiness. So high was it, indeed, that he hesitated in believing 
he possessed it. As far as the records show, he never professed 
to have attained it. In 1767 he wrote a letter to Lloyd’s Evening 
Post defending the doctrine of perfection against current mis- 
representations. The charge was made that “a Methodist, ac- 
cording to Mr. Wesley, is one who is perfect, and sinneth not 
in thought, word, or deed.”’ To this Wesley replied: “Sir, have 
me excused. This is not ‘according to Mr. Wesley.’ I have told 
all the world I am not perfect; and yet you allow me to be a 
Methodist. I tell you flat, I have not attained the character I 
draw. Will you pin it upon me in spite of my teeth? “But Mr. 
Wesley says the other Methodists have.’ I say no such thing. 
What I say, after having given a scriptural account of a perfect 
Christian, is this: ‘By these marks the Methodists desire to be 
distinguished from other men; by these we labor to distinguish 
ourselves,’ ”’*! 

He was also slow to believe that others had attained it. To- 
ward the end of the year 1744 he came into touch with two peo- 
ple who claimed they were saved from all sin. He speaks of it 
in his Journal and asks himself why it is he cannot rejoice with 
an individual who claims this experience. His answer is that 
it is “perhaps because I have an exceeding complex idea of sanc- 
tification or a sanctified man. And so, for fear he should not 
have attained all that I include in that idea, I cannot rejoice in 
what he has attained.’’*** 

Such is the doctrine of sanctification or perfection, accord- 
ing to Wesley. When it is stripped of its qualifying points, it 
describes the condition of a life that is being lived honestly up 





n2 Tbid., II, 476; VI, 501. 
13 Journal, V, 197. 
14 Thid., III, 154. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 63 


to the highest light that is progressively revealed to it. Whether 
that life is marked by sharp crises or by a gradual development, 
it clings to the ideal of progress in character as an essential 
Christian duty.””® 


IV. Assurance, or the Witness of the Spirit 


The doctrine of assurance, or witness of the Spirit, is the 
corollary of the doctrine of justification and sanctification. It 
means that progress in the Christian life has its witness in the 
realm of feeling. It is ‘“Wesley’s appeal to experience.”""® The 
definition that he held to throughout the years, without retracting 
any part of it, is the one given in his second discourse on “The 
Witness of the Spirit.” It is as follows: “By the testimony of 
the Spirit I mean an inward impression on the soul, whereby the 
Spirit of God, immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit, 
that I ama child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and 
given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even 
I, am reconciled to God.”"** Early in life he saw the necessity to 
the health of the soul of being certain of one’s spiritual condition. 
He thad been reading Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and 
Dying, and wrote to his mother his objection to the idea that 
“whether God has forgiven us or no, we know not.”” He ventures 
the contrary belief that Christian graces and a living relation to 
Christ cannot be of such little force that he who has them cannot 
tell whether he has them or not."*8 And to the end of his life he 
held to this opinion. To say otherwise would be to reduce the 
Christian life to an absurdity. It would also make God out to 
be mean and unmerciful if he did not give to a poor, wretched 
sinner worrying about his condition the knowledge that he had 
pardoned him. His mercy obliges him to witness to his children 
his pardon and reconciliation."’® To have a consciousness of this 
is the common privilege of all Christians.*°° Indeed, one cannot 
be a true Christian without it. ‘“‘We believe it cannot be, in the 


45 McConnell: Essentials of Methodism, 22. 

16 4 New History of Methodism, I, 19. 

7 Works, I, 94. 119 Thid., VII, 107. 
43 1bid., V1, 589. 120 Thid., VII, 495 


‘64 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


nature of things, that a man should be filled with this peace, and 
joy, and love, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, without per- 
ceiving it as clearly as he does the light of the sun.’’*** But this 
assurance covers only present pardon and salvation.*** It is 
“not necessarily perpetual, neither irreversible.”!” It is given 
to but few to know of their everlasting perseverance.*** To be 
sure, he who has the witness of the Spirit does not have any 
doubt that he will be able to remain steadfast to the end. Yet, 
properly speaking, it is assurance only of the present that is 
ordinarily experienced.’ 


V. The Means of Grace 

Every step in the progress toward perfection depends upon 
the grace of God. But the reception of grace depends at every 
point upon the individual himself, upon the use of the means 
of grace which God has instituted for its transmission. It is 
true that God can influence a life directly; but it is his way gen- 
erally to work through subordinate agencies.’°° To expect the 
work of God to be accomplished without the use of the available 
means is one variety of enthusiasm.7** The word “enthusiasm” 
was a well-known epithet in the eighteenth century, which, ac- 
cording to Wesley, signified “a sort of religious madness; a 
false imagination of being inspired by God.’’*8 When, there- 
fore, he told his hearers that to expect the end without the means 
is to be an enthusiast, they knew he was classing them among 
the religiously mad. The means are to be zealously used. For 
their sake primarily was the church founded. Zeal for the 
church, therefore, is but an empty name where there is no zeal 
for them.**? One ought, if anything, to be more zealous for 
them than for the church itself.°° Another abuse of the means 
of grace is to mistake them for the end of religion. They are 
not a substitute for heart religion, but the means for attaining 
it and promoting it. Unless they “actually conduce to the knowl- 


121 Thid., VI, 631. 16 Joed., 1,335; 1, 471. 
122 Thid., V, 369. 187 Thid., 1; 335; V1, 521. 
123 Thid., VI, 607. 138 Thid., V, 76. 

124 Thid., VII, 495. 129 Thid., II, 293. 


125 Thid., 1, 485. 130 Tbid., I, 290. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 65 


edge and love of God, they are not acceptable in his sight.”’’* 


The Christian will be careful, then, “neither to neglect nor rest 
in the means of grace.’’**? 

Wesley’s Journal and sermons constantly bewail the current 
neglect of the means of grace and the ordinances of the church 
and point out their great importance. It is not necessary to 
search far for the reason. Religious matters were woefully neg- 
lected in the eighteenth century. The clergy for the most part 
were illiterate. (and immoral)*** and lazy and did little else in 
a clerical way in their parishes save to read the services and 
preach on Sundays.’** Many of them lived in different towns 
from their parishes and many had more than one parish. It was 
not to be expected, under these circumstances, that they should 
devote much time to their work.’ As the century advanced, 
daily church services were less frequently attended and were 
finally discontinued in almost all parts of the kingdom.*** The 
special Wednesday and Friday services suffered a similar neglect 
and were finally abandoned.’** There was also similar disregard 
of other special days.** Lent was superficially observed.**? 
The general apathy will be better realized when it is remembered 
that attendance upon public worship was required by law. But 
this made no difference, as generally not much notice was taken 
of either statute law or canon law.**° Where attendance did keep 
up, conduct was commonly irreverent.*** The institutions of the 
church were slighted. The number of communicants at the 
Lord’s Table gradually diminished throughout the century, and 
"4 Tbid., dia 7. 

132 Journal, II, 320. 
133.4 New History of Methodism, I, 117-118; see also Simon: John Wesley and - 
the Methodist Societies, 115-117. 


134 Abbey and Overton: The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, II, 
48, 51; also Sydney: England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, II, 338, 
346-351. 

13% Tbid., op. cit., II, 10-17; Sydney, op. cit., II, 331-338, 340-342. 

138 Thid., op. cit., II, 445. 

137 Tbid., p. 446. 

138 Thid., 44668. 

139 Thid., p. 448. 

140 Simon: John Wesley and the Religious Societies, 234. 

141 Abbey and Overton, op. cit., II, 459-463; Sydney, op. cit., II, 362. 


66 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


often in many places months separated the celebration of this 
rite.“4* Rarely was the rite of baptism performed at the hour of 
public worship; it was performed, if at all, in private, and then 
with shocking irreverence.*** Confirmations were infrequent, 
and when performed were hurried and void of solemnity.**4 
The old custom of the public catechizing of children, servants, 
and apprentices had been an important means of religious in- 
struction; but this too was now but infrequently used.**° Such 
was the deplorable neglect of the institutions of the church in 
the eighteenth century. Many of the leaders of the church were 
aware of the state of things and of their responsibility. But 
their protests were of little avail.*® Wesley, too, labored to put 
an end to the neglect, and with a measure of success. 

A paragraph in his sermon on “The Means of Grace” gives 
his definition of the means of grace and of their office. “By 
means of grace I understand outward signs, words, or actions, 
ordained of God and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary 
channels whereby he might convey to men, preventing, justifying 
or sanctifying grace.” They are sacraments. “A sacrament is 
‘an outward sign of inward grace, and a means whereby we 
receive the same.’ ’’*47 Prayer, public and private, searching the 
Scriptures, receiving the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and Christian 
conference, are the chief means ordained of God. These are 
what Wesley calls “instituted means.”**8 As distinguished from 
the instituted means are the “prudential,” those “not essential, 
not of divine institution.” They concern rules and devices for 
embracing, or abstaining from, things indifferent in themselves, 
but which experience teaches are for particular individuals harm- 


14 Abbey and Overton, op. cit., II, 477-478. 

143 Thid., II, 498-499. 

144 Thid., II, 502-503; Sydney, op. cit., II, 339. 

145 Thid., II, 500-502; Sydney, op. cit., II, 339. 

146 Sydney, op. cit., II, 56, 379. 

147 Works, I, 137. 

148 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, from the First, Held in London, 
by the late Rev. John Wesley, A.M., in the year 1744, I, 16-17. Also Works, 
V, 228-229. The ‘“‘Minutes’’ gives an ampler account of the Conferences than 
is contained in the Works, and is therefore cited first. Several important mat- 
ters contained in it are omitted entirely from the Works. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 67 


ful or helpful in the art of holy living and growing in grace, 
in doing good and avoiding evil.**° 

In the list of instituted means as stated above the rite of 
baptism does not appear. Nor is it mentioned in Wesley’s fre- 
quent lists of the ordinances. It is evident that he was not par- 
ticularly endeared to it, as he was, for instance, to the Lord’s 
Supper. Nevertheless, he considered it a sacrament and a means 
of grace.°° It is the initiatory sign and the actual inception of 
the grace of the new birth for both adults and infants. It is 
“the outward sign of this inward grace.” His collected views 
on it are found in brief form in A Treatise on Baptism. It is 
devoted for the most part to a description and defense of infant 
baptism.*°? Reference will be made to this phase of it later. 
The treatise mentions many benefits of baptism. It washes away 
the guilt of original sin. It admits the individual into covenant 
relation with God and into the church as a member of Christ. 
And there is no other way of entering the church. It makes the 
individual a child of God and an heir of the kingdom of 
heaven. The manner in which the rite is administered is not 
important, whether by dipping, washing, or sprinkling, the Scrip- 
tures not determining either by precept or example which is to 
be preferred.*** 

Perhaps the reason for Wesley’s lukewarm attitude to bap- 
tism is to be found in the abuses to which its administration was 
leading in his day. Many were shunning the experience of the 
new birth on the plea that they received it at baptism, and that 
to seek it again would be denying their baptism.** Their lives 


149 Tbid., I, 17-18; Works, V, 180, 228. 

160 Journal, III, 171. 

11 Tyerman: The Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, M.A., 239, calls 
attention to the fact that this Treatise is in ‘‘slighily abridged and verbally 
altered” form a work by the father of John Wesley, the Rev. Samuel Wesley, 
called a Short Discourse of Baptism, and first published in 1700. ‘‘He thus makes 
all the opinions of his father, on baptism, his own; but it is somewhat strange 
that he should republish the treatise without the least reference to its original 
author. It is hardly fair that the treatise should be published as his own.” 

152 Works, VI, 12-22. 

153 Thid., VI, 12-22. 

1H Thid., I, 406-407. 


68 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


were showing that they were far from regenerate and Christian. 
Naturally, Wesley did not believe in this sort of baptismal regen- 
eration! “But how extremely idle are the common disputes on 
this head! I tell a sinner, ‘You must be born again.’ ‘No,’ say 
you: ‘he was born again in baptism. Therefore he cannot be 
born again now.’ Alas, what trifling is this! What, if he was 
then a child of God? He is now manifestly a child of the devil; 
for the works of his father he doeth. Therefore do not play 
on words. He must go through an entire change of heart. In 
one not yet baptized, you yourself would call that change the 
new birth. In him call it what you will; but remember mean- 
time, that if either he or you die without it, your baptism will 
be so far from profiting you, that it will greatly increase your 
damnation.”*° He called attention to the numerous baptized 
drunkards, thieves, and swearers, and all sorts of evil men. “Are 
these now the children of God?”’*® England is called a Chris- 
tian country because the majority of its people have been bap- 
tized or christened. But this cannot be, for they live in open sin, 
whatever they once were.’** Only on condition that adult folk 
repent and accept the gospel can it be said of them that they 
experienced the new birth at baptism.*°® The words of the serv- 
ice that the believer repeats, stating his entrance into the priv- 
ileges of baptism and his thanks therefor, and his prayer to 
continue therein, are rank hypocrisy unless he knows them to 
be true in his particular case.*°? Under any circumstances, if 
a person baptized in infancy, or even in riper years, has lapsed 
from the faith, justification cannot be regained without repent- 
ance, faith, and their attendant fruits in holy living.*®© 

As hostile as Wesley was to the idea that baptism can be 
made a substitute for inward holiness, it must not be supposed 
that he neglected the rite or that he believed it unnecessary. On 
the contrary, he believed that if the outward sign were properly 
received, the inward grace would always accompany it,*®* that 


185 Tbid., V, 36. 189 Thid., V, 53-54. 
156 Thid., I, 160. Oe TOG IN OT 
167 Thid., V, 332. 161 Journal, IV, 365. 


158 Thid., V, 36. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 69 


God would bear witness to his ordinance with his healing 
power,’ and fill the heart of the baptized “at the very time, with 
peace and joy unspeakable.”"** He was therefore always careful 
to administer the sacrament on proper occasions, as his Journal 
amply shows. It is interesting to see the delight he took in 
recording the baptism of persons not usually expected to desire 
it, such as a Portuguese Jew, Quakers, and Anabaptists.'** The 
conclusion of the whole matter is, according to Wesley, that 
“baptism doth now save us, if we live answerable thereto,”?® that 
although the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are applied through 
this sacrament, there is no salvation in it per se, for baptism is 
not, according to the doctrines of the church, of miraculous worth 
for adults. The important thing the individual must make sure 
of is that he is born again.*® 

The order in which the instituted means of grace are laid 
down by Conference is prayer, searching the Scriptures, and the 
Lord’s Supper.*®’ Prayer is the first means in importance for 
all who desire the grace of God,'®* and no other ordinance can 
take its place as a means of continuing and increasing the work 
of God in the soul.’ To neglect it is, therefore, to hinder the 
progress of holiness.‘ It is through this means, as well as 
through love and praise, that the individual “by a kind of spirit- 
ual reaction returns the grace he receives.”*"* “For it plainly 
appears, God does not continue to act upon the soul, unless the 
soul reacts upon God.”*”* The individual must pay attention to 
all three forms of prayer—private, family, and public. He must 
be jealous for his morning and evening hours of private wor- 
ship, and “forecast daily, wherever you are, how to secure these 
hours.”**? In Wesley’s collected works there are three sets of 
prayers—one for private use, one for families, and one for chil- 


162 Thid., IV, 286. 

168 Thid., VII, 132. 

164 Thid., II, 135, 180-181; IV, 39, 189, 245; VII, 132. 
16 Works, VI, 15. 


16 Thid., I, 404-407. 170 Ibid., I, 284. 
167 Thid., V, 228. 171 Tiid., I, 164. 
168 Jbid., I, 139. 172 Thid., I, 168. 


160 Thid., I, 410. 173 Ibid., V, 228. 


70 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


dren. The prayers for children will be mentioned later. The 
private prayers are printed under the topic, A Collection of 
Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week, first printed in 
1733 for the use of his pupils in Oxford.*“ The suppliant is given 
a set of general questions for self-examination before beginning 
his morning devotions and another set for the evening devo- 
tions. In addition, each evening prayer has prefixed a set of 
particular questions to be used in the same way. These questions 
relate more directly than the general questions to the topic of 
the prayer to which they are attached—the love of neighbor, 
humility, mortification, resignation and meekness, and thankful- 
ness. Due place is given in these forms to the inculcation of 
filial piety, to thankfulness and appreciation for being “born in 
the church and of religious parents,” and to an interest in the 
schools and universities. That Wesley was a tutor at Lincoln 
College at the time he published them, and interested in the chil- 
dren in and about Oxford, is reflected in the petitions for bless- 
ings on the “nurseries of true religion and useful learning.”’?” 

Wesley considered family prayer, as well as private, to be 
a means of grace, and he provided a set of prayers for every 
day in the week for the use of families. These, in contrast to 
the private prayers, are addressed to God in the plural person, 
and voice the more inclusive needs of the family. While they 
are full of the recognition of the sinfulness and frailty of human 
nature, they are strong in their appreciation of the redemptive 
work of Christ. They are marked by a patriotic and altruistic 
note that reaches in its sympathy all classes and conditions of 
men, even “Jews, Turks, and infidels.”*7® Wesley taught that no 
day should pass without the serious and solemn performance 
of family prayer.* Yet he was careful to point out that Chris- 
tianity is of the heart, and that family prayer which is merely 
an external act cannot be a substitute for genuine piety.’”? It 
should be literally true to the definition of a means of grace— 
the outward sign of an inward experience. 


174 Journal, V, 117. 177 Toid., IT, 304. 


175 Works, VI, 377-401. 178 Tbid., V, 129. 
176 Thid., VI, 401-417. 


THESSALY ATION IONZADULTS 71 


Wesley considered attendance upon public prayer to be 
even more important than private and family prayer, if the in- 
sistence with which he mentions it is proper basis for judgment. 
It is well known that he held high views of the church universal 
and of the Church of England in particular. Despite the fact 
that the Methodist movement finally broke away from the Church 
of England, Wesley held a warm place in his heart for it to the 
end of his life. He attended its services whenever he could con- 
veniently, and advised his preachers to do the same unless they 
had contrary scruples..7? He would not permit the Methodist 
societies to hold services at the same hour as the Established 
Churches except where these churches were inaccessible to the 
people by reason of their distance or size, or when it was un- 
desirable that they should attend them because of pernicious doc- 
trines taught.°° Whether or not he entertained any premonition 
of the ultimate separation of the Methodists from the Church of 
England, he did not permit it to alter his attachment to the 
church.’** He advised all those in his societies who were also 
members of the Church of England to attend the parish services 
in addition to the society meetings. He even advised Dissenters 
to frequent their own meetinghouses, cautioning them particu- 
larly against wandering about sermon-tasting.**? His timely 
“Word to a Sabbath Breaker’ contains the advice, “Let not a 
little thing keep you from the house of God, either in the fore- 
noon or in the afternoon. And spend as much time as you can 
the rest of the day, either in repeating what you have heard, or 
in reading the Scripture, or in private prayer, or talking of the 
things of God.”’?*% 

Wesley looked upon the widespread and constant contempt 
of the public and private worship of God as one evidence of the 
ungodliness of the nation.’** Through his labors to gather in 


179 Thid., VII, 298. 

180 Thid., VII, 315. 

181 Compare Simon: John Wesley and the Religious Socteties, 329-330. 
182 Works, VI, 164. 

18 Tbed., VI, 354. 

i Jiad., VI, 350. 


72 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the unchurched multitudes he could report to the Bishop of 
London a great increase in attendance throughout the country. 
But he was not deceived into believing that by mere church-going 
would the real ends of worship be attained.**° This could be 
only through such services as would “inform the mind and in- 
crease devotion.’’**® Were this wanting, God would not be hon- 
ored nor souls saved. He had to confess that in his own case, 
despite attendance at church for years, he “had no more of the 
love of God than a stone.’’87 The love of God and neighbor 
marks the true Christian, and lacking this one cannot be a Chris- 
tian, no matter how constantly he has attended the public offices 
of the church even from infancy.**® Public prayer, as well as 
private and family prayer, to be a means of grace must lead to 
inward increase in piety. 

The second means of grace is the searching of the Scrip- 
tures. In his insistence upon the use of the Bible Wesley was 
rediscovering for the English people one of the lost emphases of 
the Reformation. His own devotion to the Bible needs no fur- 
ther comment than his wish expressed in the Preface to the first 
volume of his sermons, “‘let me be homo unius librv’—a man of 
one book."®? It was but natural that he should wish the guide 
of his life to become the property of all others. Accordingly, 
he advised his followers to search the Scriptures, by reading 
them constantly, regularly, carefully, seriously, and fruitfully 
every day, by meditating upon them at set times and by rules, 
and by hearing them prayerfully at the morning services of the 
societies.°° To help them in this orderly use of the Scriptures 
he wrote a commentary on both the Old and New Testaments, 
which he issued under the titles, Explanatory Notes Upon the 
New Testament and Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testa- 
ment.'*' The stress he laid upon the use of the Bible was in 
keeping with his conviction that the Christian life does not 
usually begin or continue without knowledge that, in the words 


185 Thid., V, 344. 189 Thid., I, 6. 
186 Thid., V, 807. 190 Thid., V, 228; I, 141. 
187 Thid., V, 45. 191 Thid., VII, 534ff., 542ff. 


188 Thid., V, 49. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 73 


of Paul, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of 
God.”**? This is the chief and ordinary means by which God 
saves sinners.'*? To expect spiritual knowledge without reading 
the Bible is to make oneself an easy victim for enthusiasm.’ 
Furthermore, only by keeping close to it would the Methodists 
avoid personal vagaries and eccentricities, and so he frequently 
advised them not to depart from it. In the dictionary he wrote 
he gave as his definition of a Methodist, “one that lives accord- 
ing to the method laid down in the Bible.’” 

The third of the instituted means of grace is the Lord’s 
Supper. ‘Those who are in any way Christians, even of the 
lowest standing, are to partake of this sacrament as often as 
they can. Yet it was not to be restricted to those already be- 
lievers. Against the common opinion of the day that it was not 
a converting ordinance, Wesley taught that it was a means 
whereby preventing grace as well as justifying and sanctifying 
grace is conveyed. Those who are seeking the help of God, bur- 
dened with the conviction of their own helplessness, may and 
ought to commune. No other condition is indispensably re- 
quired, “every one who knows he is fit for hell being just fit to 
come to Christ in this as well as all other ways of His appoint- 
ment.’’°° By it comes the forgiveness of sins and the building 
up of the soul.*** Yet by making it accessible to those not yet 
regenerated does not mean that he encouraged rushing into it 
unprepared, that is, without solemn prayer and self-examination 
and devotion.’°* All that he meant was that no negative consid- 
eration, such as lack of character or baptism according to any 
narrow conception, should be made to stand in the way. Look- 
ing back to the time when in Georgia he refused to admit a Mo- 
ravian minister to the Lord’s Table because he had not been bap- 
tized by an episcopally ordained minister, he exclaimed, as 


1922 Romans 10. 17. 

193 Works, I, 462. 

1% Thid., VI, 521. 

1% Toid., VII, 534, note, cited by editor. 

1% Journal, II, 361-362. 

197 Works, II, 350. 

198 Minutes, I, 17; see also for shorter statement, Works, V, 228. 


74 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


though he had forgotten and was surprised that he ever did it, 
“can anyone carry High Church zeal higher than this ?’’?% 
Although the Conference of 1744 declared fasting and 
Christian conference instituted means of grace, they do not appear 
as such in Wesley’s sermon on “The Means of Grace.” There 
is not the least doubt, however, that he considered them ex- 
tremely important and a means whereby the grace of God is 
mediated, whether he considered them in the technical sense as 
means of grace or not. He particularly enjoined fasting on 
Friday.*°° But besides this he recommended moderation in eat- 
ing at all times. Not to do so is to disclose a temper of mind 
“soft and unnerved.’ “We abstain from food with this view, 
that, by the grace of God conveyed into our souls through this 
outward means, in conjunction with all the other channels of his 
grace which he hath appointed, we may be enabled to abstain 
from every passion and temper which is not pleasing in his 
sight.” Just as it is natural for those who are preoccupied 
for various reasons to neglect to care for their bodies, so it 1s 
natural for those who are sincerely overwhelmed by a proper 
sense of their sinfulness to abstain from food until they have 
found salvation. Furthermore, not only will those who desire 
deliverance from the guilt of sin practice abstinence, but also 
those who desire to be kept from sinning. For indulgence to 
excess in eating cloys the soul as well as the body and makes 
the soul the easy prey of the body, sensualizing it and stupefying 
its noblest faculties. And finally it hinders prayer, inasmuch 
as it deadens the sensibility toward God and deepens the love of 
the world.*°* As strongly as Wesley felt about fasting, he was 
not unreasonable in his recommendation of it for others. The 
peculiar physical condition of each individual is to be the guide 
to the extent to which it is carried.2 It is to be proportioned 
according to the individual’s strength so as to reserve his physi- 
cal powers and not unfit him for his labors.*°° “Deal faithfully 


oe 





199 Journal, III, 434. 203 Thid., I, 247-249. 
200 Minutes, I, 17, 80; Works, V, 229. 4 Ibid., I, 231. 
201 Thid., I, 80. 36 Jhid., I, 254. 


202 Works, I, 252. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 75 


with thy own soul, and fast as often as thy strength will per- 
mit.”?°6 It was all in the interest of the religious life that he 
recommended it. He was convinced by a lifelong practice of it 
that it was helpful, and he wished to share his discovery. 

The last of the instituted means of grace is Christian con- 
ference. By this Wesley means the control of one’s conversation 
so that what is said not only does not*harm anyone, but also helps 
him on in the Christian life. The best way to meet this result 
is to determine beforehand the reason for conference and to 
pray before it and after.?”" 

Such was Wesley’s teaching on the place and use of the 
means of grace. The subject ought not, however, to be left 
without stressing the point, already touched upon, that he did 
not consider the means of grace limited only to the saved, but 
open to those seeking salvation.?°* How important a matter this 
was in his opinion is seen by the attitude he took to the miserable 
doctrine of “stillness” held by the Moravians. They maintained 
that no one ought to use any of the means of grace or ordinances 
of the church unless and until he had true faith and a clean heart, 
that he ought to be “still” and wait until he possessed them. 
They further held that even for these people it was a matter of 
individual conscience whether or not they used them. Some 
even believed that Christ alone and not the ordinances is the 
means of grace.2°? Such quibbling Wesley considered the worst 
enemy of true holiness. To the end of his life he preached jus- 
tification by faith without the merit of works. But at the same 
time he preached that the ordinances of the church were not 
properly speaking “works,” but merely channels through which 
divine help is generally imparted to the subject who uses them, 
and that therefore they should be used both before and after 
justification. 

The dispute ultimately caused both John and Charles Wes- 
ley to withdraw from the Fetter Lane Society, the stronghold 
"206 Thid., best; 

207 Minutes, I, 17; Works, V, 229. 


208 Journal, II, 330. 
209 Thid., II, 313, 315. For Wesley’s exact relationship with the Mora- 


vians on this point, see Journal, II, 309-500. 


76 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of the Moravians, and nearly rent asunder the distinctively 
Methodist societies in London and other parts of England. Here 
was a matter, if ever there was one, making a teaching ministry 
absolutely necessary and without delay. The early morning 
meetings at the Foundery and elsewhere Wesley considered of 
great importance as a means of instructing the societies and pro- 
moting their spiritual life. He usually made his expository ad- 
dresses at that hour fit some topic pertinent at the time. During 
the ata over “stillness” his scriptural expositions were de- 
signed “to strike at the root of the grand delusion.”**® The 
Journal covering the period gives the notes of his expositions. 
Mr. Curnock says, “The method adopted is the one he learned 
and himself used in the schools at Oxford. He is still the 
‘tutor,’ the University ‘lecturer.’”*"* By his talks he brought 
peace back again to the society and halted the inroads of the 
Moravians. It was undoubtedly due in no small measure to 
Wesley and his preachers that not only the number of com- 
municants increased throughout England,?* but that the other 
means of grace and ordinances of the church were lifted out of 
contempt and neglect,*** just as they were in the places where he 
combated this doctrine of the Moravians. 


VI. The Relation Between Wesley’s Doctrines and Methodist 
Polity 

There is a vital relationship between the Methodist doc- 
trine of growth in grace unto perfection and the form and gov- 
ernment of the United Societies of Methodism. The one pur- 
pose that rules their origin and continuation is the supervised 
training of Christians in holiness. Wesley began his evangelical 
mission in the Religious Societies and worked through them for 
several years. They were gatherings of religious folk within 
the Church of England. Giving a broad and practical meaning 
to holiness, they aimed to develop the spiritual life of their mem- 


210 Jhzd., II, 354. 

411 Thid., II, 354, note 1, editorial note. 
212 Kites and Overton, op. cit., II, 479. 
213 Works, V, 291. 


THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 77 


bers, to assist the poor, and to spread Christian knowledge.?™* 
As time went on, Wesley became convinced that they were not 
performing the service for which they had been founded, and 
also that the time was ripe for societies open to everybody re- 
gardless of their church relationship.2!> He therefore created 
new societies, which later came to be known as the United Soci- 
eties, carrying over into them the best traditions of the Religious 
Societies. He states the ideal that inspired him in his description 
of “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Soci- 
eties’: “Such a society is no other than ‘a company of men hav- 
ing the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order 
to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to 
watch over one another in love, that they may help each other 
to work out their salvation.’ ”’?’® 

The consideration that contributed most to the form that 
these societies took was Wesley’s wish that progress in the Chris- 
tian life should be continuous and under constant watch. By 
the very nature of the “itineracy” there was a danger that the 
efforts of the preachers would be discursive. As a general rule, 
Wesley would not begin a work in any place which he could 
not be sure of following and developing.”**7 “He had slight 
faith in the effectiveness of a fugitive ministry.”*** He set his 
face positively against such a conception of the work of a min- 
ister as would invite a sinner to come to Christ and then leave 
him after his conversion to shift for himself without guidance 
and oversight. Quick methods of evangelism resulting in mere 
numbers recorded on the official books did not answer to Wes- 
ley’s ideal of the church. After the sinner is converted he must 
be led on to grow in holiness. The societies accordingly became 
schools of holiness with provision for instruction in righteous- 
ness suited to the needs and capacities of those in different stages 
of spiritual progress. 


214 Simon: John Wesley and the Religious Societies, 20. 
215 Tbid., 306-307. 

216 Works, V, 190. 

217 Thad., V, 212. 

218 Simon: John Wesley and the Methodist Societies, 167. 


78 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS. EDUCATION 


The members of the societies were divided into groups 
called ‘‘The Bands,” ‘‘The Select Societies,’ and “The Pen- 
itents.’ The only condition of admission into the general organ- 
ization was “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved 
from their sins.”*"° Such of those received into membership 
as believed they were justified by faith were enrolled into smaller 
companies, called “The Bands,” of not less than five and not 
more than ten members, “the married or single men, and mar- 
ried or single women, together.’’**° Those in the Bands who 
“went on daily from faith to faith” were separated from those 
who “fell from the faith.” In some places the former group 
composed separate companies called “The Select Societies.’’?** 
Those in the latter group were called “The Penitents.’’** Each 
of these groups, except the Penitents, was governed by special 
rules dealing with conditions of admission, attendance upon the 
meetings, and continuance as members. Distinct from these 
there was another division of the local societies into classes, each 
composed of about twelve members, meeting once a week, under 
the supervision of a leader, for mutual edification through per- 
sonal testimony and fellowship in prayer and praise. The 
knowledge gained by the leader of his members through these 
class-meetings and through private conferences was handed on 
to the traveling preacher at his regular visits, who used it as the 
basis of systematic supervision.-* By this system the spiritual 
ardor of the Methodists was sustained and their development in 
holiness made more secure than could have been possible by pub- 
lic worship alone. Wesley recognized it to be the very heart 
of the societies. In a pastoral letter to the societies in Bristol, 
written late in 1763 or early in 1764, he characteristically urges 
the duty of meeting regularly in band and class, declaring, 
“Whoever misses his class thrice together thereby excludes 
himsel f.”’?*4 

219 Works, V, 177. 

220 Thid., V, 183. 

221 Thid., V, 184-185; Simon: John Wesley and the Methodist Societies, 214. 
222 Thid., V, 184-185. 


223 Tbid., V, 178-179, 190-191; A New History of Methodism, I, 287-289. 
224 Journal, V, 31, note 2, cited by editor. 








THE SALVATION OF ADULTS 79 


Wesley’s recognition of individual differences in the degree 
of spiritual progress guided not only the form of organization 
which the societies assumed but also the work and methods of 
the preachers. Preaching is to be graded. To give patients with 
varied spiritual distempers in different stages the same treatment 
is quackery of the worst sort, and they who do it are not physi- 
cians but “spiritual montebanks.”’”"? “The cure of spiritual, 
as of bodily diseases, must be as various as are the causes of 
them. The first thing, therefore, is, to find out the cause; and 
this will naturally point out the cure.’’”** In a letter “On Preach- 
ing Christ,” dated December 20, 1751, Wesley contrasts preach- 
ing the law with preaching the gospel—the two general heads in 
the minister’s message. By preaching the law is meant setting 
forth the commandments of Christ to love God and one’s neigh- 
bor and to be meek, humble, and holy, especially as these are 
found in the Sermon on the Mount. By preaching the gospel is 
meant declaring God’s whole plan of salvation through Christ 
whereby power is given to obey the commandments of Christ, 
with all the blessings that follow. After a general statement of 
God’s love for sinners and his desire for their salvation, the law 
should be preached as strongly, as closely, as searchingly as pos- 
sible with but slight intermixture of the gospel, “showing it, 
as it were, afar off.”’ Then as the hearers are convinced of sin, 
and as they repent, bring in more and more of the gospel, yet 
not too hastily, but combined with the law. After they are 
justified and on the way to complete sanctification, present the 
law again with increasing emphasis upon its meaning in the light 
of the gospel, stressing obedience to it now rather as the privilege 
of the saved than as a command upon those seeking salvation.?*7 
But here no hard-and-fast rule can be laid down, for most con- 
gregations are composed of people in all stages of spiritual de- 
velopment. Only where the hearers are all distinctly of the 
same attainment should the message center on one phase, either 


225 Works, I, 413. 

2% Thid. 

27 Thid., VI, 555-558. See also, for ampler statement of the distinction 
between the law and the gospel, Works, I, 223. 


80 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


of the law in the light of the gospel or the gospel intermixed 
with the law and enforced by it.”*? What Wesley was concerned 
about was that the law should be stressed as much as it deserved 
as the normal way of convicting sinners. The preachers were 
given to preaching the gospel on all occasions and so slighting 
the very foundations of religion.””? The gospel may awaken 
one in a thousand, but the law is the ordinary method God uses 
to bring about this effect, reserving the gospel to regenerate 
them. The propriety of this procedure is enforced by the au- 
thority of the Scripture, by Christ’s employment of it, and by 
the very nature of the scheme of salvation, “It is absurd, there- 
fore, to offer a physician to them that are whole, or at least imag- 
ine themselves so to be. You are first to convince them that 
they are sick; otherwise they will not thank you for your 
labor.”’*8° To reverse the order would be to cast pearls before 
swine.*** “The holy, the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, 

are not to be prostituted unto these men.” You must begin to 
“tallx to them in their own manner, and upon their own princi- 
ples. . . . Reserve higher subjects for men of attainments.”’*? 
It was on this ground that Wesley objected to William Law’s 
tract On the Spirit of Prayer. It commends to men that they 
practice the presence of God just as they are first entering the 
religious life, while still unawakened and unacquainted with 
their sinful condition. This, according to Wesley, on the con- 
trary, should constitute not the first but one of the last phases 
of religious experience.” 

88 Thid., VI, 556-557. 231 Tbid., I, 283, 317. 


229 Thid., I, 316. 432 Thid., I, 283. 
MOL Didig ih, a7. 233 Tbhid., II, 195. 


CHAPTER III 


THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN: 
GENERAL THEORY 


I. Wesley’s Belief in the Religion of Childhood 

WESLEY’S position with respect to the religious education of 
children follows logically from his theology. We have seen that 
he believed in the depravity of the entire human race, including 
its youngest members, that both young and old are by nature en- 
tirely lacking in God’s natural and moral image, and in conse- 
quence as entirely alienated from him. We have also seen that 
he believed in the equally universal extension of grace, making 
it possible for him to hold the seeming paradox that all men 
are by nature evil, yet no man is altogether evil, for no one is in 
a state of mere nature. We have further seen that salvation 
from sin is the main purpose of life, that it begins in repentance, 
which is the knowledge and conviction of man’s despicable con- 
dition and of the certain and deserved damnation following from 
it unless it can be changed. This change, it was seen, is, in the 
man himself, a new birth or regeneration, and, in his relation 
to God, justification conditioned by the faith that the redemptive 
work of Christ is efficacious in his particular case. The conse- 
quence in the life of the individual is inward and outward 
holiness or piety, a growing experience in the love of God and 
mankind, maintained and nourished by the use of the means of 
grace. 

The application Wesley made of these doctrines to the life 
of children is found in incidental passages scattered here and 
there in his writings, but more particularly in his sermons and 
works dealing almost exclusively with children. Two of these 
have already been mentioned, namely, “A Treatise on Baptism” 
and the sermon “On the Education of Children.” Other works 
are: a sermon “On Family Religion” and another “On Obedi- 


ence to Parents”; a tract, which first appeared in the Arminian 
81 


82 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Magazine in 1783, called “A Thought on the Manner of Edu- 
cating Children” ; three articles, “A Short Account of the School, 
Near Bristol,’ ‘A Plain Account of the Kingswood School,” 
and “‘Remarks on the State of Kingswood School’; and, finally, 
a tract entitled “Serious Thoughts Concerning Godfathers and 
Godmothers.’”’ A sermon preached to some children in Bolton 
on the text, “Come, ye children, hearken unto me; and I will 
teach you the fear of the Lord,” would be of great value, were 
it available, in determining Wesley’s manner of addressing chil- 
dren directly; but it is not even known whether he ever com- 
mitted it to writing. The chief sources of insight into the 
subject matter and the method Wesley employed in teaching 
religion to children are the tracts, “Tokens for Children,” “Les- 
sons for Children,” “Instructions for Children,” and “Prayers 
for Children.” 

Wesley firmly believed that a genuine and deeply religious 
life is possible in childhood. At just what age he expected to 
see holiness manifested is difficult to say. Very often the ages 
of the children to whom he refers as undergoing religious expe- 
riences are not recorded. Often they are spoken of as groups 
or classes. Even when given, the ages are only approximate. 
The children are said to be about such an age, or as between 
certain ages, or as either of one age or of the next. Exactness, 
however, in fixing the precise age is not particularly necessary, 
for Wesley set no rigid time in early life before which it is im- 
possible to be pious. Accordingly, it is not surprising to find 
him citing several instances of piety in children of extremely 
tender years. 

The youngest example of such piety is that of a child who 
died at the age of two years anda half. It was a case that struck 
his attention as rare and phenomenal, and was credible to him 
only because it was backed by such solid testimony. It was 
“such a child,” he says, “as is scarce heard of in a century.” 
He records it in his Journal of April 8, 1755. “Through much 
hail, rain, and wind we got to Mr. Bladdiley]’s, at Hayfield, 





1 Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, IV, 119. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 83 


about five in the afternoon. His favorite daughter died some 
hours before we came, such a child as is scarce heard of in a 
century. All the family informed me of many remarkable cir- 
cumstances, which else would have seemed incredible. She 
spake exceeding plain, yet very seldom; and then only a few 
words. She was scarce ever seen to laugh, or heard to utter a 
light or trifling word. She could not bear any that did, nor 
any one who behaved in a light or unserious manner. If any 
such offered to kiss or touch her, she would turn away, and say, 
‘I don’t like you.” If her brother or sisters spoke angrily to 
each other, or behaved triflingly, she either sharply reproved 
(when that seemed needful) or tenderly entreated them to give 
over. If she had spoke too sharply to any, she would humble 
herself to them, and not rest till they had forgiven her. After 
her health declined she was particularly pleased with hearing 
that hymn sung, ‘Abba, Father,’ and would be frequently sing- 
ing that line herself: “Abba, Father, hear my cry!’ On Monday, 
April 7, without a struggle, she fell asleep, having lived two 
years and six months.”? 

The case of a pious boy three years of age is entered in the 
Journal of June 28, 1746. “I inquired more particularly of 
Mrs. Nowers concerning her little son. She said he appeared 
to have a continual fear of God, and an awful sense of his pres- 
ence; that he frequently went to prayers by himself, and prayed 
for his father and many others by name; that he had an exceed- 
ing great tenderness of conscience, being sensible of the least 
sin, and crying and refusing to be comforted when he thought 
he had in anything displeased God; that a few days since he 
broke out in prayer aloud, and then said: ‘Mamma, I shall go 
to heaven soon, and be with the little angels. And you will go 
there too, and my papa; but you will not go so soon;’ that, the 
day before, he went to a little girl in the house and said: ‘Polly, 
you and I must go to prayers. Don’t mind your doll; kneel 
down now: I must go to prayers: God bids me.’ When the 
Holy Ghost teaches, is there any delay in learning? This child 





2 Journal, IV, 110-111. 


84 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


was then just three years old! A year or two after he died in 
peace.” 

The instance of another unusual girl is entered in the 
Journal of September 16, 1744. The entry preceding records 
the burial of a young man converted on his death-bed and gives 
proper setting to this account. “I buried, near the same place, 
one who had soon finished her course, going to God in the full 
assurance of faith when she was little more than four years old. 
In her last sickness (having been deeply serious in her behaviour 
for several months before) she spent all the intervals of her con- 
vulsions in speaking of, or to, God. And when she perceived 
her strength to be near exhausted, she desired all the family to 
come near, and prayed for them all, one by one; then for her 
ministers, for the church, and for all the world. A short time 
after, recovering from a fit, she lifted up her eyes, said, “Thy 
kingdom come,’ and died.’”* 

The last example of piety in extremely tender years that 
will be recorded here, and the only other one given in detail by 
Wesley, is recorded without any but introductory comment in 
the Journal of May 29, 1750. “I inquired concerning Richard 
Hutchinson, of whom I had heard many speak. Huis mother 
informed me: ‘It was about August last, being then above four 
years old, that he began to talk much of God, and to ask abund- 
ance of questions concerning him. From that time he never 
played nor laughed, but was as serious as one of threescore. He 
constantly reproved any that cursed or swore, or spoke inde- 
cently in his hearing, and frequently mourned over his brother, 
who was two or three years older, saying, “I fear my brother 
will go to hell, for he does not love God.” About Christmas 
I cut off his hair; on which he said, “You cut off my hair be- 
cause you are afraid I shall have the smallpox; but I am not 
afraid; | am not afraid to die, for I love God.” About three 
weeks ago he sent for all of the society whom he knew, saying 
he must take his leave of them; which he did, speaking to them, 
one by one, in the most tender and affectionate manner. Four 
mre serie aa ae yey 

4 Toid., III, 150. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 85 


days after he fell ill of the smallpox, and was light-headed 
almost as soon as he was taken; but all his incoherent sentences 
were either exhortation, or pieces of hymns, or prayer. The 
worse he was the more earnest he was to die, saying, “I must go 
home; I will go home.” One said, “You are at home.” He 
earnestly replied, “No; this is not my home; I will go to 
heaven.’ On the tenth day of his illness he raised himself up 
and said: “Let me go; let me go to my Father; I will go home. 
Now, now I will go to my Father.” After which he lay down 
and died.’’” 

One would not attach too much weight to these somber 
records. They do, however, show that Wesley believed it was 
possible for very young children to be religious, and they also 
give some idea of the nature of the religion, which, though strik- 
ing him as unusual in children so young, he would cultivate as 
early as possible. It is a piety marked by a seriousness of temper 
and behavior, a slight mystic sense, a tender conscience, and a 
deep concern for the spiritual condition of others. It is in accord 
with Wesley’s definition of holiness—the love of God and man- 
kind. It is true that these records came second-handed to him; 
but he went out of his way to get them, and believed them au- 
thentic, whether anyone else did or not. Evidently, he did not 
believe that their experiences were merely the result of social 
suggestion. He does not suggest that he might have considered 
their condition, in part at least, abnormal and pathological. His 
comments are scant. He just accepts them as precociously pious. 

His reasons for holding to the possibility of mature reli- 
gious consciousness in children so young lie in his doctrine of 
grace, that when the Spirit is the teacher there is no delay in 
learning.® The things of God cannot be pressed too soon upon 
them. “If you say, ‘Nay, but they cannot understand you when 
they are so young,’ I answer, No; nor when they are fifty years 
old, unless God opens their understanding. And can he not do 
this at any age?” 





5 Tbhid., III, 475. 
6 Tbid., III, 244. 
7 Works, II, 431. 


86 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Although these extreme cases are recorded by Wesley, by 
far the majority of children of whom he speaks as being under 
religious impressions are considerably older. Most of them are 
in later childhood, that is, on the verge of adolescence, or in 
adolescence. One group reported as seriously moved toward 
salvation is composed of children from six to fourteen. The 
children of the schools in Kingswood affected by the recurring 
revivals there were between the ages of seven and fourteen, if 
the only accounts that mention ages may be taken as typical.® 
Quite frequent mention is made of children under religious im- 
pressions between the ages of eight and ten. The Weardale So- 
ciety elicited Wesley’s warm praise because the family religion 
of its members was so strong. He reports that “in most of their 
families, the greatest part of the children above ten years old 
are converted to God.’’?® More children, however, are men- 
tioned between the ages of nine and fifteen than of younger 
years. The age at which Wesley believed he himself to be ripe 
for some spiritual change was ten, for it was then that he thought 
he had sinned away the “washing of the Holy Ghost” which he 
had received at baptism.1* He confesses, however, that the in- 
structions he received in childhood concerning outward duties 
and sins he accepted gladly and thought of often, “but all that 
was said to me of inward obedience or holiness I neither under- 
stood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the 
true meaning of the law as I was of the gospel of Christ.” 
If in later years he remembered his own early experience, he 
must have been reluctant in accepting reports of piety of any 
depth in very young children, at least in any under ten. But 
it does not appear that this influenced his later dealings with 
children. 

These older children, in Wesley’s estimation, are capable 
of experiencing every step in the process of salvation. Many 
are in deep distress, seriously concerned over their natural state, 

8 Journal, V1, 514. 

® Tbid., V, 258; VII, 94-05. 

10 Thid., V, 466. 
1 Tbid., I, 465. 
12 Tbhid. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 87 


convinced of sin and “under strong drawings.’’** Some are 


born again and “indisputably justified,’ and rejoicing in the 
peace of God.** Several are sanctified and saved from inward 
sin and are patterns of holiness.” In fact, the experiences of 
many of them match and in several instances surpass the expe- 
riences of their elders. Thus at the society in Dublin “thirteen 
or fourteen little maidens, in one class, are rejoicing in God their 
Saviour; and are as serious and stayed in their whole behaviour 
as 1f they were thirty or forty years old. I have much hopes 
that half of them will be steadfast in the grace of God which 
they now enjoy.”*® Ina lovefeast at Epworth several children 
“spoke with the wisdom of the aged, though with the fire of 
youth. So out of the mouth of babes and sucklings did God 
perfect praise.”** Wesley compares the children in the Wear- 
dale revival with the adults in the Everton revival. Many chil- 
dren at Weardale became young men in Christ, enjoying an 
experience deeper and a fellowship with God more constant than 
the oldest man or woman whom Wesley had ever seen or heard 
of at Everton, very few of these surpassing an infant state 
of grace.’® 


II. The Purpose of Religious Education 

Wesley’s theory of religious education is in keeping with 
his belief that every stage in religious experience is possible in 
childhood. The goal of all work with children at home, in the 
schools, and in the Methodist societies is to make them pious, 
to lead to personal religion, and to insure salvation. It is not 
merely to bring them up so that they do no harm and abstain 
from outward sin, nor to get them accustomed to the use of the 
means of grace, saying their prayers, reading good books, and 


the like, nor is it to train them in right opinions. The p | 
lof religious education is to instill in children true religion, holi- 
‘ sf sen he awed etary 
bid., III, 236, 237; IV, 279-280; V, 255, 258-260, 362, 388, 485, 524-526; 
VI, 514-515; VII, 23, etc. 
14 Tbid., III, 266, 466; IV, 27; V, 152, 258-260, 362, 524-526; VI, 4, 78-79; 
VII, 68, 75. 
6 Tbid., V, 464; VII, 75, etc. 17 Thid., VI, 352. 
16 Thid., VII, 68. 18 Ibid., V, 471-472. 


eo 


88 © WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ness, and the love of God and mankind, , and to train them in the 
™% image of God. . OE ee Te Re 
Oui ohes ‘making of everything that is done for them subor- 
dinate to their growth in religion is emphasized in every impor- 
tant writing of Wesley’s that bears on children. He deplores 
the neglect of “family religion, the grand desideratum among the 
Methodists.’*® If something is not done to acquaint the chil- 
dren with real religion, the present revival will die away in a 
short time. And so he advises parents to train them up in the 
way they should go, and directs his preachers to go from house 
to house and enforce a return to family worship. He also makes 
it their duty to engage actively in the training of the children 
themselves.”° 
In caring for the continuation of the children’s education 
after their training at home, Wesley was guided by the same 
purpose of making everything subservient to religion. He set 
forth principles to lead parents in the choice of the right school. 
To decide which school to send them to, it is necessary, he says, 
to settle a previous question of the purpose of higher education. 
_It is to extend their training for heaven as well as for tl this life. 
“That school, fhen, is the only proper one whose masters 5 take this 
‘to be the goal of education and will Il zealously keep it beter the 


‘children, cuieine them i in religion @ as well as learning.” Such 


schools “are nurseries of all manner of Rieverinceod and the 
boys should not be sent to them. Girls should not be sent to 
large boarding schools, for there they will be taught by the other 
girls “everything which a Christian woman ought not to learn” 
and will be unable to continue in the fear of God and save their 
souls. If possible, therefore, parents should bring up their girls 
themselves; otherwise send them to God-fearing mistresses who 
' keep only so many pupils as to be able to pay personal attention 
to each one of them, and whose lives are examples of what the 
children should become.” “Methodist parents, who would send 





19 Tind., V, 193. 
20 Works, II, 301; Mtnutes, I, 51, 62, 67. 
21 Toid., II, 305-306. 2 Works, II, 306. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 89 


your girls headlong to hell, send them to a fashionable boarding- 
school !’*8 

But Wesley did not leave the matter with a condemnation 
of existing conditions. He indorsed for the Methodist people 
several private mistresses and schools of the right sort.4 Miss 
Owen’s boarding-school for girls at Publow he regarded as a 
pattern, perhaps the best in Great Britain.*° Curnock suggests 
that some arrangement may have existed between this school 
and the Methodists, and that perhaps Wesley had subsidized 
it.27° He also asserts that its existence was due to Wesley’s 
encouragement.*7 When Miss Owen removed from Publow, 
Miss Bishop set up a school for girls at Keynsham continuing 
the Christian tradition, much to Wesley’s satisfaction.?* These 
teachers, together with Miss Bosanquet, who ran an orphan 
school, he regarded as ideal teachers for girls.*? Their teaching 


ee 


led to the 1¢ knowledge : and love of God. And such should be the 


“result of all te The true Christian school will first make 
Christians, and then teach other matters. Thus he wrote to Miss 
Bishop: ‘Make Christians, my dear sister, make Christians! 
Let this be your leading view. . .. Let everything else you 
teach be subordinate to this. Mind one thing in all. Let it be 
said of the young women you educate, 


“Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eyes, 
In all her gestures sanctity and love.’ 3° 


When Wesley was on his way to Georgia he wrote to his brother 
Samuel, headmaster at Tiverton School, Devonshire, that the 
souls in his school were committed to-him_ by God. to-be-prepared. 


for I heaven, to ibe instructed in the he gospel as _ as well as in Greek 
eietymnpsiennanssnimeinnenan 


et ne 


and { Latin, to. be built up in the knowledge a and love of: God. 


a egal a 


23 Journal, V, 452. 

% Works, II, 306. 

% Journal, V1, 78-79; Minutes, I, 113. 

% Tbid., VI, 118, note 1; see also Minutes, I, 119, 125. 
27 Thid., V, 484, note 3. 

28 Thid., VI, 336. 

29 Ibtd., V, 375-376; 375, note 3; 484, note 3. 

20 Works, VII, 243. 


XM 


Ry 


90 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


“You are even now called to the converting of heathens, as well 
iyi by tits 

The way in which Wesley conducted charity schools and 
the Kingswood School for the higher education of Methodist 
boys lends further support to his belief in the primacy of reli- 
gion in education. The charity school for colliers’ children in 
Kingswood (not to be confused with the boarding-school there) 
was similar in curriculum to the contemporary charity schools, 
with greater emphasis upon religious instruction.®* There it 
was “proposed, in the usual hours of the day, to teach chiefly 
the poorer children to read, write, and cast accounts; but more 
especially (by God’s assistance) to ‘know God, and Jesus Christ 
whom he hath sent.’”°? The charity school conducted at the 
Foundery Society in London supplies the most detailed informa- 
tion of Wesley’s ideal for charity schools. Many of the chil- 
dren, he says, of the Foundery were kept from school by the 
poverty of their parents, and consequently ran wild, while those 
who attended school acquired the rudiments of learning but 
were “under almost a necessity of learning heathenism at the 
same time,” so that it would have been better for them to lack 
that knowledge than to have purchased it so dearly. So he 
undertook to teach them, with the aid of two schoolmasters, in 
his own home at the Foundery.** When the Foundery was re- 
linquished and the society moved to City Road Chapel, a charity 
~ school was commenced there in the course of five or six years.*° 
Wesley’s sole reference to it is that he preached to raise funds 
for it, and that children are there “trained up both for this world 
and the world to come.’’*® 

Wesley was led to establish the New School at Kingswood 
for the higher education of boys because of a dearth of the right 
sort of boarding-schools. It was to be a model Christian institu- 





31 Tbid., VI, 601. 

8 North: Early Methodist Philanthropy, 81. 

33 Journal, II, 323. 

%4 Works, V, 188-189. 

85 Stevenson: History of City Road Chapel, 88, 333. 
% Journal, VII, 222. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN oI 


6é 


tion®’ “which would not disgrace the apostolic age.’*®> Its two 

outstanding features were to be “sound religious training and 

perfect control of the children.”*? At the opening of the school 

in 1748, Wesley preached his sermon “On the Education of 

Children,” from the text, “Train up a child in the way he should 

( go; and when he is old he will not depart from it.’’*° The key- 

| words to the educational ideal he had in mind for it are in the 
hymn written by Charles Wesley for the opening service: 


“Come Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
To whom we for our children cry, 
The good desired and wanted most 
Out of thy richest grace supply, 
The sacred discipline be given 
To train and bring them up for heaven. 


“Answer on them that end of all 
Our cares and pains, and studies here, 
On them, recovered from their fall, 
Stampt with the heavenly character, 
Raised by the nurture of the Lord, 
To all their paradise restored. 


“Error and ignorance remove, 
Their blindness both of heart and mind, 
Give them the wisdom from above, 
Spotless, and peaceable, and kind. 
In knowledge pure their mind renew, 
And store with thoughts divinely true. 


“Learning’s redundant part and vain 
Be here cut off, and cast aside: 
But let them, Lord, the substance gain, 
In every solid truth abide, 
Swiftly acquire, and ne’er forego 
The knowledge fit for man to know. 


“Unite the pair so long disjoined 
Knowledge and vital piety, 
Learning and holiness combined, 
And truth and love let all men see. 
37 Works, VII, 345. 


** A quotation from Wesley cited in The History of the Kingswood School, by 
Three Old Boys, 13. 


89 Thid., 14. 49 Journal, III, 356. 


g2 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


In these whom up to thee we give, 
Thine, wholly thine to die and live. 


“Father, accept them in thy Son, 
And ever by thy Spirit guide, 
Thy wisdom in their lives be shewn, 
Thy name confessed and glorified, 
Thy power and love diffused abroad, 
Till all our earth is filled with God.’”*! 


Wesley’s interest also in the Sunday-school movement, to 
the inception of which Methodism made its contribution, even 
anticipating it by fourteen years, was chiefly because he saw in 
it a great potentiality for making Christians. To be sure, he 
approved of the Sunday schools because of their philanthropic 
features and called them “one of the noblest specimens of charity 
which have been set on foot in England since the time of Wil- 
liam the Conqueror.”** But he saw in them much more besides, 
In the first reference he makes to them in his Journal, in 1784, 
he thinks that God may have a deeper purpose for them than is 
evident to men. “So many children in one parish are restrained 
from open sin, and taught a little good manners, at least, as 
well as to read the Bible. I find these schools springing up 
wherever I go. Perhaps God may have a deeper end therein 
than men are aware of. Who knows but some of these schools 
may become nurseries for Christians?’** Three years later, as 
the movement gains impetus, he writes to a friend: “It seems 
these will be one great means of reviving religion throughout 
the nation. I wonder Satan has not sent some able champion 
against them.’’** Seeing in the Sunday school a great auxiliary 
to the Methodist reformation, he gave it his hearty support.*® 

Such, according to Wesley, as seen from many points of 
view, is the chief object of all work with and for children. In 

41 Charles Wesley: Hymns for Children and Others of Riper Years, 35-36. 

“ From a letter to Duncan Wright, cited by Tyerman: The Life and Times 
of John Wesley, III, 522. 

4 Journal, VII, 3. 

“4 From a letter to Richard Rodda, cited by Tyerman, op. cit., III, 500. 


* See Wardle: History of the Sunday School Movement tn the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 93 


the home, in the schools, and in the societies it is to make Chris- 
tians, inwardly and outwardly. 


Ill. The Salvation of Children by Baptism and Training 


As to the actual process by which this is to be begun and 
carried out, there are seemingly conflicting views in Wesley. 
One is made to feel that Wesley himself was conscious of a 
strife between his theory and his practice. In theory, the first 
step in the redemption of the child is baptism. The new birth, 
the beginning of the inward change, is reached by adults through 
baptism only on condition that they repent and believe the gos- 
pel.*® But it is reached by children through the outward sign of 
baptism without this condition, for they can neither repent nor 
believe.*7 For them, regeneration is annexed to their baptism 
unconditionally., Wesley’s views on infant baptism, as before 
indicated, are found in his father’s Short Discourse of Baptism. 
There should be no hesitancy in regarding it as representing 
Wesley’s personal opinions on the subject, for he published it as 
his own, under the title, 4 Treatise on Baptism, when he was 
over fifty years of age. This work gives several reasons in sup- 
port of the view that infants are proper subjects of baptism. 
Infants are guilty of original sin, and they cannot be saved 
ordinarily unless this is washed away by baptism. They are 
included in the evangelical covenant with God and capable of 
solemn consecration to him, which can be made only by baptism. 
They have the right to come to Christ to be ingrafted into him, 
and ought to be brought to him for that purpose; but it neces- 
sitates their admittance into the church by baptism. Infant bap- 
tism was the practice of the apostles and has been held by the 
Christian Church ever since. Baptism regenerates, justifies, and 
gives the infant all the privileges of the Christian religion. For 
all these reasons, therefore, it is not only proper for parents to 
present their infants for baptism, but their sacred duty.* 

This conception of baptism stated in terms of Wesley’s 





Works, V, 36, 38; VI, 21. 
4“) Thids, V,'38; V1, 21. 
8 Jhid., VI, 16-22. 


94 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


theological system means that children by that rite are born again 
and brought into right relationship to God, that the bent of their 
nature toward evil is arrested and set toward good, and that the 
diseases of nature are in the process of cure. It means that 
“herein a principle of grace is infused’’*® into them, and that they 
have entered an environment which will insure their development 
in that principle until they become holy. The work accom- 
plished is so far effectual that if they die before they commit 
actual sin, they will be eternally saved.°® And if they live, they 
need never again to pass through the porch of repentance and the 
door of faith unless they do commit actual sin. But it will be 
natural for them to sin, for the principle of nature is still in 
them at cross purposes with the principle of grace, just as it is 
in believers of riper years. Therefore they need constant atten- 
tion from their earliest years. i 
This position presents a striking parallel to that held by 

the solitaries of the Little Schools of Port-Royal which flour- 
ished in France in the middle years of the seventeenth century. 
Mr. Bridgen, a contributing editor of the New History of Meth- 
odism, asserts that Samuel Wesley criticized, in his letters, many 
schools of thought, among them the Port-Royalists, and that these 
criticisms were known to his son John and influenced his theol- 
ogy.” Just what his attitude was toward the Port-Royalists and 
its effect upon John Wesley it has been impossible to determine. 
In his youth he came to know Pascal through his mother,”? and 
later read his Thoughts.** He is the only member of the Port- 
Royal community to whom Wesley makes reference in his writ- 
ings. Even if he were closely familiar with their work, he would 
have taken issue with their rigid conception of predestination 
and God’s arbitrary selection of those upon whom he will confer 
grace. He would also have objected to their doctrine of abso- 
lution for those who had fallen into deadly sin after baptism. 

49 Works, VI, 15. 

60 Tbid., VI, 14. 

51 4 New History of Methodism, I, 167. 

% Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, No. III, Mrs. Wesley's 


Conference With Her Daughter, An Original Essay by Mrs. Susanna Wesley, 39. 
83 Journal, IV, 45. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 95 


But he was closely akin to much in their theology, and, as will 
be seen later, in their educational method. They believed that 
infants are in a state of original sin and guilty of it, that bap- 
tism restores them to innocency, but that since they retain their 
corrupt nature, despite baptism, they are in danger of falling 
again into sin. The only way to conserve their innocency is 
to guard them completely from contamination during their help- 
less years and at the same time to build character that they may 
resist evil by their own strength when they become of age. This 
is the task of education. 

Wesley’s practical position, it may be inferred, is similar 
to this. Baptism but begins the change in human nature and is 
to be followed by proper and careful instruction and discipline. 
The new birth no more cures children entirely of their spiritual 
diseases, nor sets altogether aright the wrong bias of their 
nature, than it does for adults. They still possess tendencies to 
evil, and are still beset by the diseases of pride, self-will, and 
love of the world in which they are born. Justification and re- 
generation represent but the door to religion. Religion itself 
is holiness through the knowledge and love of God. So that 
even though baptized they are not necessarily holy, certainly not 
in the highest degree. But they are to become so. They are to 
“grow in grace in the same proportion as they grow in years.”°® 
The goal is to make predominant the principle of grace and to 
overcome the principle of nature. This is to be done, with the 
help of God, by discipline and teaching. “This is the most 
probable method for making their children pious, which any 
parents can take.’°® Your children are “immortal spirits whom 
God hath, for a time, intrusted to your care, that you may train 
them up in all holiness, and fit them for the enjoyment of God 
in eternity.”°" ‘The grand end of education” is to cure the dis- 
eases of human nature.*® “The bias of nature is set the wrong 
way : education is designed to set it right. This, by the grace of 





54 Barnard: The Little Schools of Port-Royal, 53-54. 

55 Works, II, 305. 58 Tbid., II, 310. 
56 Thid., II, 308. 

87 Tind., II, 302. 


96 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


God, is to turn the bias from self-will, pride, anger, revenge, and 
the love of the world, to resignation, lowliness, meekness, and 
the love of God.’°? This work, begun by parents, is to be con- 
tinued in the schools by instructors “that will tread in the same 
steps.’’°° But, as has already been indicated, it is a task of great 
difficulty to find teachers of this sort. That is the reason Wesley 
was so careful to guide parents in the choice of schools for their 
children. 

For the same reason he was concerned in the choice parents 
made of godfathers and godmothers for their children at bap- 
tism. Only those should be chosen who are of the highest Chris- 
tian character and who will be certain to perform their duty 
faithfully. Wesley’s brief tract entitled Serious Thoughts Con- 
cerning Godfathers and Godmothers states his anxiety over the 
neglect of this office. Many in his day were hesitant to answer 
for children at baptism because of the mistaken notion that their 
duty was to promise that the child would “renounce the devil 
and all his works, constantly believe God’s holy word, and obedi- 
ently keep his commandments.” As a matter of fact, Wesley 
points out, not the sponsor but the child promises this. The 
sponsor, according to the Liturgy, undertakes to see to it that the 
infant realizes as soon as he is able the nature and solemnity of 
his profession, and to influence him to attend worship, learn the 
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, tha Ten Commandments, and all 
things else he should know for the health of his soul, that he may 
be brought up to lead a holy life. Failure on the part of spon- 
sors to understand the nature of their duty was leading to a 
neglect of it. Furthermore, many parents in Wesley’s day were 
apparently choosing godfathers and godmothers regardless of 
their fitness for their task. He therefore advises them to select 
only those who truly fear and serve God and who will perform 
their undertaking’ with knowledge and love. If this evil is 
remedied and parents and sponsors cooperate to train their chil- 
dren, “what a foundation of holiness and happiness may be laid, 
even to your late posterity!’ 

59 Thid., VII, 459. 61 Jbid., VI, 235-236. 
60 Tbid., VII, 460. 





RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 97 


IV. The Salvation of Children by Training and Conversion 

Wesley’s theory that infants are born again at baptism and 
that training is the most probable method of making children 
pious is seemingly at odds with his practice of expecting and in- 
ducing the new birth in children beyond the years of infancy. 
For instance, at the opening of the New Kingswood School he 
preached his sermon “On the Education of Children,” which 
contains his most detailed advice concerning the cure of the dis- 
eases of human nature.®* Inasmuch as the students of this 
school were to be drawn largely from Methodist homes, and, in 
part at least, from preachers’ homes, it is to be expected that they 
would be baptized. Yet Wesley encouraged the experience of 
the new birth in these children not only during his own frequent 
meetings with them but also through their masters. The Journal 
records also that he preached on education in other places—Bris- 
tcl, Manchester, London—using this same sermon.®* ‘There is 
no reason for believing that in these places he refrained from 
stimulating children to regeneration. On the contrary, accord- 
ing to the Journal, wherever he met children his chief work was 
to cultivate in them a sense of their sinful nature and a desire 
for a cure, by talks on their natural state, and on the first prin- 
ciples of religion, namely, repentance and faith.®* All the evi- 
dence points to the fact that he labored as strenuously to bring 
children into the instantaneous experience of religion as he ad- 
vised parents to train them up in religion. 

Is it possible to reconcile Wesley’s faith in religious educa- 
tion with his application of the revival methods to children? He 
believed, it will be recalled, that anyone who has sinned after his 
baptism has denied that rite and therefore must have recourse 
to another new birth if he is to be saved, just as the Port-Royal- 
ists believed in the necessity of absolution after losing baptismal 
innocency. If an individual, who before he had the use of 
reason was consecrated to God and set apart as a temple for 
the Holy Spirit, has been serving the devil since he came to the 


8 Journal, IIT, 356. 
8 Tbid., V, 189, 193, 253; VII, 99. 
4 Titd., IV, 279-280; V, 388; etc. 


98 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


use of reason and has been setting up in his heart pride, the love 
of the world, anger, lust, foolish desire, and other sinful affec- 
tions, he has denied his baptism and cannot be saved without 
being born again. Also, any willful sin, such as lying, profan- 
ing the Lord’s Day or the Lord’s name, is a denial of baptism, 
as much as sinful affections, and necessitates a new birth. It 
is a severe ideal; but Wesley held it up before the people. And 
it is seen that it was no temporary opinion from the fact that 
this aspect of his teaching is stressed in two of his most impor- 
tant sermons, ““The Marks of the New Birth’ and “The New 
Birth.” Now, since Wesley believed that reason dawns in the 
child when he begins to walk or talk, he is justified logically in 
holding that the benefits of baptism may be lost early in life, for 
from then on willful sin becomes possible. He was convinced 
that he himself had sinned away the benefits of baptism at an 
early age. He saw parents neglecting the religious training of 
their children. He came into constant contact with children 
running wild in sin, lying and profaning the Lord’s Day and 
name. These seem to have given him reason enough for holding 
that children must actually be born again. But, it must be 
noticed, his teaching that the new birth is necessary under the 
conditions of a denial of baptism is not in conflict with his edu- 
cational position. It 1s, rather, a strong confirmation of it, for 
only by strict training will it be possible to retain the benefits 
of baptism. The revival methods would be necessary only where 
Christian nurture had failed. 

There is no evidence to show that Wesley ever put the fore- 
going theory into practice. The evidence points to another 
theory altogether, according to which the aims of the revival 
method and religious education are the same. This theory pays 
no attention whatever to baptismal regeneration but implies the 
need of regeneration under all circumstances. It is the theory 
that conversion—to use the term disliked by Wesley—is uni- 
versally necessary for children as well as adults. Professor 
Rishell points out in a brief article in the Methodist Review on 
“Wesley and Other Methodist Fathers on Childhood Religion,” 


& Works, I, 160-161, 406-407. 





RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 99 


of which only a little over three pages and a half are devoted to 
Wesley, that Wesley did not believe conversion to be necessary 
for children, generally or universally, but that he believed in the 
effectiveness of religious instruction apart from conversion as 
the way to the religious life.6* In proof he cites random sen- 
tences from Wesley, such as the following from the sermon 
“On Family Religion”: “The wickedness of the children is 
generally owing to the fault or neglect of their parents.” It is 
well to quote from Wesley’s paragraph in more detail, “Is 
there not a generation arisen, even within this period, yea, and 
from pious parents, that know not the Lord? That have neither 
his love in their hearts nor his fear before their eyes? How 
many of them already ‘despise their fathers, and mock at the 
counsel of their mothers! How many are utter strangers to 
real religion, to the life and power of it! And not a few have 
shaken off all religion, and abandoned themselves to all manner 
of wickedness! Now, although this may sometimes be the case, 
even of children educated in a pious manner, yet this case is 
very rare: I have met with some, but not many instances of it. 
The wickedness of the children is generally owing to the fault 
or neglect of their parents. For it is a general, though not uni- 
versal rule, though it admits of some exceptions, “Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it.’ ’’® 

Now, Rishell’s unguarded position is not tenable. For, as 
a matter of fact, Wesley did not hold that a religious education 
makes conversion unnecessary, but that religious education and 
conversion supplement each other. All that he states in the 
passage which Rishell uses to support his interpretation is, that 
where there is no religion in the children the parents are usually 
to blame for not training them in a pious way. What Wesley 
really means by this and by the more positive statement that 
training is the most probable method of making children pious 
can be discovered only by defining more closely what constitutes 
the training of children in his theory. He gives the concept of 


% Methodist Review, LXXXIV, 779. 
8? Works, II, 301. 


100 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


training and education a wider connotation than they usually 
carry. He uses them to include not only the bringing of children 
to a knowledge and appreciation of the conditions of salvation, 
but also to their personal appropriation of salvation. Religious 
education must lead to the experience of regeneration with its 
resultant life of holiness. It must aim to produce repentance 
and faith, that is, the knowledge of self and of God through 
Christ, and the life of inward and outward piety which nat- 
urally follows. This is made clear by a section from the ser- 
mon “On Family Religion,’ a few lines following the sentence 
which Rishell quotes. The text is from Joshua 24. 15: “As 
for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Wesley inquires, 
““What is it to ‘serve the Lord,’ not as a Jew, but as a Christian? 
Not only with an outward service (though some of the Jews 
undoubtedly went farther than this), but with inward; with the 
service of the heart, ‘worshiping him in spirit and in truth.’ 
The first thing implied in this service is faith—believing in the 
name of the Son of God. We cannot perform an acceptable 
service to God till we believe on Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. 
Here the spiritual worship begins. As soon as any one has the 
witness in himself, as soon as he can say, “The life that I now 
live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave 
himself for me,’ he is able truly to ‘serve the Lord.’” This is 
nothing else than Wesley’s description of the experience of re- 
generation and justification by faith. From this starting point 
he proceeds to show that the love of God follows the belief, and 
the love of neighbor necessarily accompanies the love of God. 
He finally shows that to serve the Lord means to obey him. 
This is the first head of the sermon. The second asks, Who are 
included under the expression “my house’? And Wesley an- 
swers, ‘““The children along with the wife and servants.’®* In 
other words, children are to be trained to serve the Lord; but 
they cannot serve him without the experience of regeneration 
and justification, Therefore, to train children up in the way 
they should go means to lead them ultimately into the expe- 
rience of salvation in much the same way that an adult is led 
Hiatt Ibid., II, 301-302. 





RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IOI 


into it. It is true, as Rishell says, that Wesley believed that the 
sins of children are due to the neglect of parents; but the neglect 
of parents is not simply failure to give their children a few 
lessons in religion. It is more serious than this. It is failure to 
induce in them the ordered stages of the experience of real 
religion as set forth in his theology. Training must be a con- 
verting process. 

Wesley’s position in the sermon “On the Education of 
Children” is seen to coincide with this view. There to train 
children in the way they should go means to cure them of their 
inherent diseases—pride, atheism, love of the world, self-will, 
etc. But since Wesley identifies the cure of these diseases with 
real religion, there is no conflict between the two sermons. The 
cure of pride and atheism results in a knowledge of self and a 
knowledge of God, repentance, and faith. The cure of the love 
ot the world and self-will results in the love of God and obedi- 
ence to his will. To cure the diseases of nature and to train the 
individual in religion mean the same thing.® 

Wesley’s tract, A Thought on the Manner of Educating 
Children, also suggests the harmony of these two positions, 
although, since it is a polemic, it does not labor with details. On 
the first page Wesley is defending the education children receive 
at Kingswood and in the schools run by Miss Bosanquet and 
Miss Owen. His critic has been saying that children brought 
up severely turn out worse than those left to develop more nat- 
urally. In answer to this, Wesley points to these schools and 
says that the children educated in them will be worse than others 
only on condition that they have never been converted or have 
quenched the Spirit subsequent to conversion. He thus iden- 
tifies conversion with at least a part of the educative process. 
On the next page Wesley says true religion ought to be instilled 
into children as early as possible, that education is designed to 
set aright the bias of nature, to cure the diseases of self-will, 
pride, etc. Therefore to train children in the way of real reli- 
gion is to regenerate them, to cure the corruption of their nature. 


69 Tizd., II, 307ff. 
70 Tbid., VII, 458-459. 


102 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


And inasmuch as it should begin with the first dawn of reason, 
before there has been any possibility of the loss of the effects of 
baptism, it would seem to be a regeneration process added to the 
regeneration received at baptism. And this training should in- 
clude the more gradual processes of Christian nurture. The 
methods of the revival will be employed to supplement and to 
quicken the processes of nurture. 

The close relationship between the process of adult salva- 
tion and child education should be emphasized. The foundation 
of real religion is the knowledge of self and of God through 
Christ; that is, repentance and faith. Since salvation is from 
original sin and from the inherited bias of nature as well as 
from actual sin, the actual process whereby it is accomplished 
does not need to wait until sin has been committed, although in 
the case of adults it is so delayed. Two significant statements 
in Wesley’s teaching harmonize at this point: the doctrine of 
original sin and faith grounded thereon is the only foundation 
of true piety; and, training is the most probable method of mak- 
ing children pious. To understand this more fully, it is neces- 
sary to study in greater detail his educational theories and the 
manner of their application. To this task the chapter to follow 
will address itself. 


CHAPTEROLV, 


THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN: 
PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 


I. The Influence of Mrs. Susanna Wesley Upon the Educational 
Theory of John Wesley 

ALTHOUGH Wesley was a leader of popular education and 
did much to advance the intellectual condition of the English 
people, stressing especially their religious development, it cannot 
be said that he made any brilliant discoveries in the theory or 
method of education, either religious or secular. In many ways 
he was a child of the eighteenth century and shared its blindness 
to the meaning of childhood. Many of his educational views are 
unquestionably eccentric. Nevertheless, he did entertain several 
enlightened views as well. 

In his writings there are echoes of several educational re- 
formers. Mention has already been made of the educational 
work of the Religious Societies, and of Wesley’s debt to them, 
as well as of their debt to him. He learned much from the 
Moravians in Georgia, and more from them in Germany.* Some 
of his ideas are in accord with John Amos Comenius, the Mora- 
vian pioneer of education of the seventeenth century; but whether 
he had read his works, as his brother Charles had read his life, 
cannot be ascertained. He read and admired Milton’s Tractate 
on Education, and acknowledges his indebtedness to it.2 He 
was powerfully influenced by Locke’s Essay on the Human 
Understanding, and it is probable, as Mr. Bridgen asserts, that 
he knew the Thoughts on Education.? He had read Rousseau’s 
Emile, but found it a “most empty, silly, injudicious thing.’”* 

1 Works, VII, 348. For full account of Wesley’s visit to the Moravians in 
Germany, see Journal, II, 23-63. 

2 Jo1d., VII, 341. 

3 Ibid., VII, 336; A New History of Methodism, I, 218. 


‘ Tbid., VI, 458. 
103 


104 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


There is no evidence that he was favorably startled by any of its 
doctrines. Froebel was born but eight years before Wesley’s 
death, and Pestalozzi did not wield an influence in England 
until long after. Wesley evidently received but little inspiration 
from such of these educational reformers as he came to know, 
although some of his opinions are strikingly similar to theirs. 
He derived more of his convictions concerning the educa- 
tion of children from his cultured and pious mother, Mrs. Su- 
sanna Wesley, than from any other source. His right to instruct 
parents was questioned several times.” On one of these 
occasions, when he preached on the education of children and 
the management of families, although many were convinced of 
their duty, “some still made that very silly answer, “Oh, he has 
no children of his own!’ Neither had Saint Paul, nor (that we 
know) any of the apostles. What then? Were they, therefore, 
unable to instruct parents? Not so. They were able to instruct 
everyone that had a soul to be saved.”® That he possessed such 
a detailed program of how children should be managed, not 
having any of his own, was due largely to his remembrance of 
his mother’s management of the numerous children of the Ep- 
worth Rectory, and especially to an account she gave him in 
writing of the principles on which she based her management. 
Ten of the nineteen children of the Epworth Rectory sur- 

vived infancy. Their training was almost exclusively in the 
hands of Mrs. Wesley, a task for which she was eminently 
qualified. She refused to send her children to the local school- 
master, John Holland, because of his notorious incompetency 
and wickedness.’ She preferred to teach them herself. She 
prepared her three boys for secondary school, only one of them 
receiving any outside supplementary training.* Practically all 
the education her daughters received seems to have come from 
her. So thorough was their training that several of them be- 
came unusually cultured for their day, and one attained out- 

5 Journal, V, 189, 253. 

6 Thid., V, 253. 

7 Telford: Life of John Wesley, 15. 


8 Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 64. 
*Tyerman: The Life and Times of John Wesley, I, 18. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 105 


standing scholarship. She looked upon all her children as talents 
committed to her under trust by God, and although she desired 
that they should be versed in useful knowledge it was her “prin- 
cipal intention” to save their souls.*° A deepened spiritual expe- 
rience that came to her after the burning of the Rectory led her 
to resolve a more conscientious care of her children, and from 
that time she made it a habit to converse one evening a week 
with each child separately... She devoted Thursday evening 
to John,” and was especially careful of him, seeing in his mirac- 
ulous escape from the fire some deep providential meaning.** 
So deeply was the boy impressed by these conferences that at 
eight years of age he was adjudged by his father fit to receive 
holy communion.** In later life, amid the multifarious cares of 
a growing church, he pleaded that she spare some part of the 
same evening to prayer for him.*° Mrs, Wesley prepared books 
suited to the children’s needs, finding none available that met 
her severe requirements. Among these were an exposition of 
the Apostles’ Creed, an exposition of the Ten Commandments,*® 
and a “Religious Conference, Written for the Use of My Chil- 
dren,” in the form of a dialogue with her daughter Amelia. 
Wesley knew this manuscript and refers to it as ““My Mother’s 
Conference with her Daughter.”** During her husband’s ab- 
sences from Epworth she continued family worship and held 
services Sunday evenings for her children and servants, which 
neighbors also joined, often packing the house. At these serv- 
ices she read a sermon and prayers and discussed religious 
topics.1* John Wesley observed of her shortly after her death 
that “she (as well as her father and grandfather, her husband, 


10 From a letter quoted by Clarke, op. cit., 47-48. 

11 From a letter quoted by Wesley, Journal, III, 32-34. 

2 Tbid:, 33. 

13 From Mrs. Wesley’s Meditations, quoted by Moore: Life of John Wesley, 
I, 101. 

14 Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 122. 

16 Works, V1, 593. 

16 Mrs. Wesley’s Conference, editor’s preface, 1i1. 

17 Ibid. 

18 From a letter quoted by Wesley, Journal, III, 32-34. 


106 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


and her three sons), had been, in her measure and degree, a 
preacher of righteousness.’’”” 

Back of the rules of her “way of education,” as she called 
it, and back of the intent that animates it, lies her theology, in 
the light of which alone it can be understood. Between her 
theology and that of her son John there is a marked similarity. 
It is because he agreed with her theology that he could accept 
the educational position that rests upon it. She believed that 
human nature, due to the Fall, is depraved in understanding, 
will, and affections, possessing a strong bias to evil, and that 
the root of all evil is self-will.*° The first steps in one’s recovery 
are repentance and faith, a deep and sincere sensibility of his 
condition, and an appropriation of the righteousness of Christ." 
“Christ will be no Saviour to such as see not their need of one. 
The freedom of the will is necessary if there is to be moral 
responsibility.22 The speculations of philosophy are barren 
compared with the experimental knowledge of God through 
faith.* Yet reason is not to be denied its proper place in reli- 
gion, for “the understanding is the highest and most noble power 
or faculty of the human soul.””® This life is a probation for 
the next; therefore religion is man’s one important business on 
earth, and all else of little moment in comparison.7® In these 
points the theology of mother and son agrees. Yet for many 
years there was one fundamental difference. Not until old age 
did she believe in present forgiveness of sins, having scarce ever 
heard of such a thing until over a year after the knowledge and 
experience of it had reached her two sons.*’ Consequently she 
did not clearly distinguish between justification and sanctifica- 


’ 


99992 


19 Journal, III, 32. 

20 From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Wesley Family, II, 4off., 
71-72, 80, 84; Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 183-184; Wesley, Journal, III, 36. 

31 Mrs. Wesley’s Conference, 34. 

22 From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 241. 

73 From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Wesley Family, II, 42. 

4 Thid., II, 78-79. 

35 Mrs. Wesley’s:Conference, 27. See also, 5. 

*% From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 181, 183. 

37 Journal, II, 267-268. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 107 


tion, nor between justification by faith and by works.”® The glad 
certainty of acceptance with God was consequently lacking in 
her theology, and seems to explain in part the defect in her sys- 
tem of education, namely, the lack in it of provision for a more 
inward experience. 

In this setting of Mrs. Wesley’s theology, to educate chil- 
dren into salvation becomes a serious and difficult enterprise. 
She was reluctant to write down her “way of education,” for 
she did not believe it could be generally observed, being adapted 
only for those whose chief aim is to save the souls of their 
children, and who, fully appreciating the difficulty of the task, 
are willing to literally renounce the world to accomplish it.? 
It was important that training should be begun early. In a 
letter to “Jacky” at Oxford she states one of the guiding prin- 
ciples in her theory of education. “Believe me, dear son,” she 
writes, “old age is the worst time we can choose to mend either 
our lives or our fortunes. If the foundations of solid piety are 
not laid betimes in sound principles and virtuous dispositions, 
and if we neglect, while strength and vigor last, to lay up some- 
thing ere the infirmities of age overtake us, it is a hundred to 
one odds that we shall die both poor and wicked.’”®° And yet, 
despite her insistence upon early piety and continuous training, 
she was deeply anxious lest her children should not be saved. 
She wants “Jacky” to examine himself and see if he is “in a 
state of faith and repentance or not,” and if he has “a reason- 
able hope of salvation.”** These and other like advices seem 
to indicate that her “way of education” does not exclude the 
necessity of regeneration any more than her son’s way.*” 

The test of everything that touches life, according to Mrs. 
Wesley, is whether it furthers or hinders progress toward sal- 
vation. She does not with a Kempis condemn “all mirth or 
pleasure as sinful or useless.”’*? She permitted games of chance 





28 Clarke: Wesley Family, II, 119-120. 

2? From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 47-48. 
30 Thid., 200. . 

31 Thid., 181. 

2 Tbid., 71, 90, 92. 

3 Ibid., 184. 


1088 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


and skill, and even cards, in the Epworth home. Stevens, agree- 
ing with Adam Clarke, is undoubtedly right in saying that John’s 
early education was not unduly severe.** Certainly, it was not 
as severe as the educational program he later advocated. His 
mother followed and advised the rule which she observed in her 
youth, never in one day to spend more time in recreation than 
in private religious exercises.*” Her sane criterion of the good 
or evil in pleasures, however innocent in themselves, is whether 
these things rob the mind and conscience of their mastery over 
the body, and dull the sense of God and spiritual things.2® Un- 
fortunately, her son did not altogether agree with her as to the 
things that have this effect, and he excluded many things from 
both young and old which he was permitted at home. Such is 
the background of Mrs. Wesley’s “way of education.” 

The letter containing the way itself deserves to be quoted 
in full, so much light does it throw upon Wesley’s own theories. 
It is written to him at his own request for the details of her 
method of raising children. A section of it on the management 
of the children’s wills, comprising a tenth of the entire letter, 
he incorporates with slight alterations in the sermon on “Obedi- 
ence to Parents,’ and uses ideas and wording from other parts 
of it freely in all of his sermons bearing on children. Attention 
has never been called, so far as has been discovered, to the fact 
that this quotation is taken from his mother’s letter, Wesley 
introducing it simply as a “part of a letter on the subject, printed 
some years ago.”°’ Many of his hearers and readers had un- 
doubtedly seen it in his Journal, where he had printed it, and 
were therefore acquainted with its source. Their biographers, 
while calling attention to the son’s debt in educational theory to 
his mother’s discipline, and to the publicity he gave to her 
methods as illustrating his own theories, have nevertheless failed 
to show how great was his dependence upon the letter itself. 
The latest biographer of Mrs. Wesley holds the hypothesis that 

34 Stevens: History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, Called 
Methodism, I, 54, and note 33. 

3 From Mrs. Wesley’s writings quoted in Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 94. 

36 Thid., 184. 

37 Works, II, 319. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 109 


possibly his desire to have his mother’s theories in writing was 
due to “his own aspirations to family life.”** Whatever may 
have been his reasons for desiring it, the reason for entering it 
in his Journal was, as he says, “for the benefit of those who are 
intrusted, as she was, with the care of a numerous family.’ 
Her letter follows: 
July 24, 1732. 

DEAR SON, 

According to your desire, I have collected the principle rules I 
observed in educating my family; which I now send you as they 
occurred to my mind, and you may (if you think they can be of use 
to any) dispose of them in what order you please. 

The children were always put into a regular method of living, in 
such things as they were capable of, from their birth: as in dressing, 
undressing, changing their linen, &c. The first quarter commonly 
passes in sleep. After that they were, if possible, laid into their 
cradles awake, and rocked to sleep; and so they were kept rocking 
till it was time for them to awake. This was done to bring them to 
a regular course of sleeping; which at first was three hours in the 
morning and three in the afternoon; afterward two hours, till they 
needed none at all. 

When turned a year old (and some before), they were taught to 
fear the rod, and to cry softly; by which means they escaped abun- 
dance of correction they might otherwise have had, and that most 
odious noise of the crying of children was rarely heard in the house, 
but the family usually lived in as much quietness as if there had not 
been a child among them. 

As soon as they were grown pretty strong they were confined to 
three meals a day. At dinner their little table and chairs were set 
by ours, where they could be overlooked; and they were suffered to 
eat and drink (small beer) as much as they would, but not to call 
for anything. If they wanted aught, they used to whisper to the 
maid which attended them, who came and spake to me; and as soon 
as they could handle a knife and fork they were set to our table. 
They were never suffered to choose their meat, but always made 
eat such things as were provided for the family. 

Mornings they had always spoon-meat; sometimes on nights. But 
whatever they had, they were never permitted to eat at those meals 
of more than one thing; and of that sparingly enough. Drinking 
or eating between meals was never allowed, unless in case of sick- 

38 Clarke: Susanna Wesley, 46. 
39 Journal, III, 34. 





110 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


ness, which seldom happened. Nor were they suffered to go into the 
kitchen to ask anything of the servants when they were at meat; if 
it was known they did, they were certainly beat, and the servants 
severely reprimanded. 

At six, as soon as family prayers were over, they had their sup- 
per; at seven the maid washed them; and, beginning at the young- 
est, she undressed and got them all to bed by eight; at which time 
she left them in their several rooms awake—for there was no such 
thing allowed of in our house as sitting by a child till it fell asleep. 

They were so constantly used to eat and drink what was given 
them that, when any of them was ill, there was no difficulty in 
making them take the most unpleasant medicine; for they durst not 
refuse it, though some of them would presently throw it up. This 
I mention to show that a person may be taught to take anything, 
though it be never so much against his stomach.*® 

In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done 
is to conquer their will, and bring them to an obedient temper. To 
inform the understanding is a work of time, and must with children 
proceed by slow degrees as they are able to bear it; but the sub- 
jecting the will is a thing that must be done at once, and the sooner 
the better. For, by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a 
stubbornness and obstinancy which is hardly ever after conquered: 
and never, without using such severity as would be as painful to me 
as to the child. In the esteem of the world they pass for kind and 
indulgent whom I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get 
habits which they know must be afterward broken.41 Nay, some are 
so stupidly fond as in sport to teach their children to do things 
which in a while after they have severely beaten them for doing. 
Whenever a child is corrected, it must be conquered; and this will 
be no hard matter to do if it be not grown headstrong by too much 
indulgence. And when the will of a child is totally subdued, and 
it is brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great 
many childish follies and inadvertencies may be passed by. Some 
should be overlooked and taken no notice of, and others mildly 
reproved; but no willful transgression ought ever to be forgiven 
children without chastisement, less or more, as the nature and cir- 
cumstances of the offense require. 

I insist upon conquering the will of children betimes, because 
this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious educa- 
tion, without which both precept and example will be ineffectual. 

40 Wesley’s quotations from this letter in his sermon “On Obedience to 


Parents” begins at this point. 
41 Wesley does not quote the remainder of this paragraph. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 111 


But when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being 
governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own under- 
standing comes to maturity, and the principles of religion have 
taken root in the mind. 

I cannot yet dismiss this subject. As self-will is the root of all 
sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their 
after-wretchedness and irreligion; whatever checks and mortifies it 
promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident 
if we further consider that religion is nothing else than the doing 
the will of God, and not our own; that, the one grand impediment 
to our temporal and eternal happiness being this self-will, no indul- 
gences of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable. Heaven or hell 
depends on this alone. So that the parent who studies to subdue it 
in his child works together with God in the renewing and saving a 
soul. The parent who indulges it does the devil’s work, makes reli- 
gion impracticable, salvation unattainable; and does all that in him 
lies to damn his child, soul and body, for ever.*? 

The children of this family were taught, as soon as they could 
speak, the Lord’s Prayer, which they were made to say at rising and 
at bedtime constantly; to which, as they grew bigger, were added a 
short prayer for their parents, and some collects; a short catechism, 
and some portions of Scripture, as their memories could bear. 

They were very early made to distinguish the Sabbath from other 
days, before they could well speak or go. They were as soon taught 
to be still at family prayers, and to ask a blessing immediately after, 
which they used to do by signs, before they could kneel or speak. 

They were quickly made to understand they might have nothing 
they cried for, and instructed to speak handsomely for what they 


“ The following paragraph, which enforces the necessity of breaking the 
child’s will, appears in Wesley’s sermon as being also from his mother’s letter. 
It apparently stood at this point in the letter in its original form. It is not found 
in the letter printed in the standard edition of Wesley’s Works, nor in Curnock’s 
standard edition of the Journal. With it Wesley’s quotation concludes: 

“This, therefore, I cannot but earnestly repeat, Break their wills betimes. 
Begin this great work before they can run alone, before they can speak plainly, 
or perhaps speak at all. Whatever pains it cost, conquer their stubbornness: 
break the will, if you would not damn the child. I conjure you not to neglect, 
not to delay this. Therefore, 1, Let a child from a year old, be taught to fear 
the rod and to cry softly. In order to this, 2, Let him have nothing he cries 
for; absolutely nothing, great or small; else you undo your own work. 3, At all 
events, from that age, make him do as he is bid, if you whip him ten times run- 
ning to effect it: let none persuade you it is cruelty to do this: it is cruelty not 
to do it. Break his will now, and his soul will live, and he will probably bless 
you to all eternity.”— Works, II, 320. 


i12' "WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUGATION 


wanted. They were not suffered to ask even the lowest servant for 
aught without saying, “Pray, give me such a thing;” and the servant 
was chid if she ever let them omit that word. Taking God’s name 
in vain, cursing and swearing, profaneness, obscenity, rude, ill-bred 
names, were never heard among them. Nor were they ever permitted 
to call each other by their proper names without the addition of 
Brother or Sister. 

None of them were taught to read till five years old, except Kezzy, 
in whose case I was overruled; and she was more years learning 
than any of the rest had been months. The way of teaching was 
this: the day before a child began to learn, the house was set in order, 
every one’s work appointed them, and a charge given that none 
should come into the room from nine till twelve, or from two till 
five; which, you know, were our school hours. One day was 
allowed the child wherein to learn its letters; and each of them did 
in that time know all its letters, great and small, except Molly and 
Nancy, who were a day and a half before they knew them per- 
fectly; for which I then thought them very dull; but since I have 
observed how long many children are learning the horn-book, I 
have changed my opinion. But the reason why I thought them so 
then was because the rest learned so readily; and your brother 
Samuel, who was the first child I ever taught, learned the alphabet 
in a few hours. He was five years old on the toth of February; 
the next day he began to learn; and, as soon as he knew the letters, 
began at the first chapter of Genesis. He. was taught to spell the 
first verse, then to read it over and over, till he could read it off- 
hand without any hesitation; so on to the second, &c, till he took 
ten verses for a lesson, which he quickly did. Easter fell low that 
year; and by Whitsuntide he could read a chapter very well; for he 
read continually, and had such a prodigious memory that I cannot 
remember ever to have told him the same word twice. 

What was yet stranger, any word he had learned in his lesson he 
knew wherever he saw it, either in his Bible or any other book; by 
which means he learned very soon to read an English author well. 

The same method was observed with them all. As soon as they 
knew the letters, they were put first to spell, and read one line, then 
a verse; never leaving till perfect in their lesson, were it shorter or 
longer. So one or other continued reading at school-time, without 
any intermission; and before we left school each child read what 
he had learned that morning; and, ere we parted in the afternoon, 
what they had learned that day. 

There was no such thing as loud talking or playing allowed of, 
but every one was kept close to their business, for the six hours of 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 113 


school: and it is almost incredible what a child may be taught in a 
quarter of a year, by a vigorous application, if it have but a toler- 
able capacity and good health. Every one of these, Kezzy excepted, 
could read better in that time than the most of women can do as 
long as they live. 

Rising out of their places, or going out of the room, was not per- 
mitted unless for good cause; and running into the yard, garden, or 
street, without leave was always esteemed a capital offense. 

For some years we went on very well. Never were children in 
better order. Never were children better disposed to piety or in more 
subjection to their parents, till that fatal dispersion of them, after 
the fire, into several families. In these they were left at full liberty 
to converse with servants, which before they had always been 
restrained from; and to run abroad, and play with any children, 
good or bad. They soon learned to neglect a strict observation of the 
Sabbath, and got knowledge of several songs and bad things, which 
before they had no notion of. That civil behavior which made them 
admired when at home by all which saw them was, in great measure, 
lost; and a clownish accent and many rude ways were learned, which 
were not reformed without some difficulty. 

When the house was rebuilt, and the children all brought home, 
we entered upon a strict reform; and then was begun the custom of 
singing psalms at beginning and leaving school, morning and even- 
ing. Then also that of a general retirement at five o’clock was 
entered upon, when the oldest took the youngest that could speak, 
and the second the next, to whom they read the Psalms for the day, 
and a chapter in the New Testament; as, in the morning, they were 
directed to read the Psalms and a chapter in the Old; after which 
they went to their private prayers, before they got their breakfast or 
came into the family. And, I thank God, this custom is still pre- 
served among us. 

There were several by-laws observed among us, which slipped my 
memory, or else they had been inserted at their proper place; but I 
mention them here, because I think them useful. 

1. It had been observed that cowardice and fear of punishment 
often led children into lying, till they get a custom of it, which they 
cannot leave. To prevent this a law was made, That whoever was 
charged with a fault, of which they were guilty, if they would 
ingenuously confess it, and promise to amend, should not be beaten. 
This rule prevented a great deal of lying, and would have done 
more, if one*®? in the family would have observed it. But he could 
not be prevailed on, and therefore was often imposed on by false 


#8 Journal, III, 38, note 1, editorial: probably John Wesley’s father. 


114 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


colors and equivocations; which none would have used (except 
one),** had they been kindly dealt with. And some, in spite of all, 
would always speak truth plainly. 

2. That no sinful action, as lying, pilfering, playing at church, or 
on the Lord’s Day, disobedience, quarreling, &c., should ever pass 
unpunished. 

3. That no child should ever be chid or beat twice for the same 
fault; and that, if they amended, they should never be upbraided 
with it afterward. 

4. That every signal act of obedience, especially when it crossed 
upon their own inclinations, should be always commended, and fre- 
quently rewarded, according to the merits of the cause. 

5. That if ever any child performed an act of obedience, or did 
anything with an intention to please, though the performance was 
not well, yet the obedience and intention should be kindly accepted ; 
and the child with sweetness directed how to do better for the future. 

6. That propriety be inviolably preserved, and none suffered to 
invade the property of another in the smallest matter, though it 
were but of the value of a farthing or a pin; which they might not 
take from the owner without, much less against, his consent. This 
rule can never be too much inculcated on the minds of children; and 
from the want of parents or governors doing it as they ought pro- 
ceeds that shameful neglect of justice which we may observe in the 
world. 

7. That promises be strictly observed; and a gift once bestowed, 
and so the right passed away from the donor, be not resumed, but 
left to the disposal of him to whom it was given; unless it were 
conditional, and the condition of the obligation not performed. 

8. That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well; and 
then that she be kept to her work with the same application, and 
for the same time, that she was held to in reading. This rule also 
is much to be observed; for the putting children to learn sewing 
before they can read perfectly is the very reason why so few women 
can read fit to be heard, and never to be well understood.#5 


This letter reveals a discipline strict and persistent, but 
withal calm and unhurried. It shows that Mrs. Wesley gov- 
erned by inflexible rules nearly every detail of her children’s 
lives—their physical growth, their play, their study and work, 
and their piety and devotion. Wesley applies her rules more 


“ Thtd., III, 38, note 2, editorial: May this have been Hetty? 
4 Tbid., III, 34-39. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 115 


explicitly to the cure of children’s diseases of nature. In many 
respects, as will be seen, he outdoes his mother in strictness. 


II. Religious Education in the Home 
(a) Discipline 

Wesley, following his mother, conceives the training of 
children to be a twofold task. One branch of it is discipline, 
the other teaching. The disciplinary work is to correct the bias 
of nature by curing the diseases of nature. It is done chiefly 
in two ways, the one negative and the other positive. The 
growth of the diseases should not be stimulated; they should 
not be fed. Most parents are guilty of this, of adding fuel to the 
slumbering fires. But more is required than the withholding of 
everything that does this. There should follow positive methods 
to root out the diseases and to heal them. As soon as any of 
the evil roots are seen springing up through the fertile soil of the 
child’s life, their advance should at once be checked and efforts 
made to uproot them. This is the disciplinary task. The reli- 
gious instruction of children begins before this is accomplished, 
merging with it and supplementing it. The dawn of conscious 
religion should be coincident with the dawn of reason. The 
right time to begin instruction is “from the very time that reason 
dawns.”*® As soon as their understanding opens they should 
be told why they have been subjected to such a discipline, and 
then be led forth into the instruction of definite religious prin- 
ciples.*7. The combined task should be begun as early as possi- 
ble. “Scripture, reason, and experience jointly testify that, inas- 
much as the corruption of nature is earlier than our instructions 
can be, we should take all pains and care to counteract this cor- 
ruption as early as possible.”*® 

The most important work of discipline is to cure the disease 
of self-will. It is the foundation of religious education, because 
true religion is disposing of our life according to the will of 
God and not according to our own will. The only way to pre- 


4 Works, VII, 459. 
47 Thid., II, 320; VII, 458-460. 
48 Totd., VII, 459. 


116 WESLEY .ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


pare children to submit to God in their riper years is to subdue 
their will when they are young. And this is the province 
of the parent, for “the will of a parent is to a little child in the 
place of the will of God.” Therefore, a wise parent will begin 
as soon as the child’s will appears.*® Although the understand- 
ing is to be informed by slow degrees through time, the will 
should be subjected at once, for it becomes more difficult the 
older the child grows. It should be done before he is two years 
old. It may be done later, but it will be with much more diff- 
culty.°? One of the most practical ways of accomplishing this 
is never to give the child what it cries for, but to teach it “to 
fear the rod and to cry softly.”°’ To give it what it cries for, 
to humor it, is but to reward its will for self-assertion.°? The 
task requires constant attention and unremitting firmness and 
resolution.** The severity of this rule has been held up for 
ridicule and generally misunderstood. What Wesley and his 
mother mean by it is not so much to break the will, for it is not 
yet set in an infant, but to prevent it from setting, from becom- 
ing habituated to indulge itself and the rest of one’s nature. The 
word Mrs. Wesley prefers for “break” is “subdue” or “con- 
quer.” From her letter it is quite evident that the object in be- 
ginning correction early is in order to avoid the later necessity 
of using methods which would require “such severity as would 
be as painful to me as to the child.”** 

The disease of love of the world admits of treatment before 
the child is old enough for intellectual instruction, as does the 
disease of self-will. The pleasures of the senses, of the flesh 
and of the eye usually feed the love of the world. Therefore 
those things that gratify the outward senses should be given to 
children cautiously, if given at all. Before they are weaned 
their diet should be exclusively milk, “the natural food of chil- 
dren.” After they are weaned they should be denied other kinds 
of food until their nature really demands it. Such glittering 
playthings and fancy clothes as catch their eye and fascinate 





49 Tbid., II, 311-312. 82 Thid., II, 312. 
60 Tbid., II, 321. & Jbed., Il, 312: 
51 Tbid., II, 312, 320. 54 Journal, III, 35. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS | 117 


them should also be withheld and the plainest things substi- 
tuted.» Parents are not to adorn their children “with such 
gewgaws as other children wear” simply to look prettier.®® 
Above all, whenever they are presented with unusual things, it 
is never to be as a reward for doing their duty. To do so would 
cause them to place too great value upon the merely pleasurable 
in life. They are to look to God for rewards. And this they 
should be taught to do as soon as they are old enough for instruc- 
tion. “Habituate them to make God their end in all things; and 
inure them, in all they do, to aim at knowing, loving, and serv- 
ing God.’’*? So great a task is it to change the bias of nature 
from a love for the world to the love of God that all in the house- 
hold need to cooperate in effecting it. Especially should servants 
and mothers-in-law be held in check. Servants are to be care- 
fully advised never to work against the rules of the house by 
giving good things to children. Mothers-in-law are to be re- 
fused any share whatever in the management of children, “In 
four score years I have not met with one woman that knew 
how to manage grandchildren. My own mother, who governed 
her children so well, could never govern one grandchild. In 
every other point obey your mother. Give up your will to hers. 


& Works, II, 313-314. 

86 Joid., II, 265. It is interesting to compare Wesley with Horace Bush- 
nell on this point. From dissimilar views of human nature and contrasted theo- 
logical backgrounds they arrive at about the same conclusion regarding dress 
and the discipline of the body. Bushnell says: “The subject of dress, taken as 
related to religious character of youth, is one of transcendent importance. .. . 
The child is going to enlarge his consciousness, so as, in a sense, to take in his 
dress and be configured to it—inverting the common order of speech on the 
subject, when we talk of cutting the dress to the child; for it is equally true, in a 
different sense, that the child will be cut to his dress. . . . This taste for show, 
and finery, and flattery—what is it but the beginning of all irreligion? and what 
will the after life be but the continuance of this beginning? . . . The real ques- 
tion of dress is what shall be put upon this child, to make it feel most like a 
Christian—what will give him the finest feeling with the least of show and.-van- 
ity? . . . Dress your child for Christ, if you will have him a Christian; bring 
everything, in the training, even of his body, to this one final aim, and it will 
be strange, if the Christian body you give him does not contain a Christian 
soul.”—Christian Nurture (new edition), 248-251. Used by permission of 
Charles Scribner’s Sons. 

57 Thad., II, 315. 


118 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


But with regard to the management of your children, steadily 
keep the reins in your own hands.”*® 

The disease of pride also admits of early treatment. It is 
ordinarily fed by parents who praise their children and suffer 
and encourage others to do the same before their very face. 
To praise them for other than religious worth is but teaching 
them to value what is unworthy, “what is dung and dross in 
the sight of God.’’*® “They who teach children to love praise, 
train them up for the devil.”®° They should commend them 
“exceeding sparingly,” and then only if with it they teach them 
that God alone is praiseworthy and the source of all that his 
children possess for which they are commended.™ “To strike 
at the root of their pride, teach your children as soon as possi- 
bly you can, that they are fallen spirits; that they are fallen 
short of that glorious image of God, wherein they were first 
created; that they are not now, as they were once, incorruptible 
pictures of the God of glory; bearing the express likeness of the 
wise, the good, the holy Father of spirits, but more ignorant, 
more foolish, and more wicked than they can possibly conceive. 
Show them that, in pride, passion, and revenge, they are now 
like the devil. And that in foolish desires and groveling appe- 
tites, they are like the beasts of the field.”®* That is, they are 
to be taught that this is their condition apart from grace. Such 
self-knowledge is the essence of repentance, and leads naturally 
to a desire for salvation. This teaching harmonizes with Wes- 
ley’s conviction that the doctrine of original sin and salvation 
through Christ alone “is the ‘most proper’ of all others ‘to be 
instilled into a child.’’’® 

The disease of atheism, unlike the diseases just discussed, 
is fed not so much by what parents actually do for their chil- 
dren as by their neglect. Its treatment is, therefore, more 
through teaching than through discipline. Parents feed athe- 
ism by permitting days at a stretch to go by without once men- 
tioning the name of God to their children or even alluding to 





58 Thid., II, 314. 61 Works, II, 313. 
89 Thid., II, 313. S Jha. V1, 213. 
60 Wesley: Instructions for Children, 135. © Ibid., V, 575-576. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 119 


him, while they talk to them on every other conceivable subject. 
As a consequence God and the unseen world seem remote and 
the visible world all that there is of the universe. Parents fur- 
ther aggravate the disease by assigning creation and natural 
events to chance and to secondary causes. God is not naturally 
connected with the experience of the children. The constructive 
effort to heal atheism will continually impress upon the mind of 
the child from the first dawn of reason that God is the creator 
and governor of the universe and the source and inspiration 
of everything good in it and in human beings. “Thus it is, we 
are to inculcate upon them, that God is all in all.’’** 

Self-will, love of the world, pride, and atheism are the par- 
ent diseases of human nature, and are the first that should be 
attacked in the religious training of children. There are diseases 
which branch off from these, such as anger, falsehood, injus- 
tice, and unmercifulness. In describing them and in prescrib- 
ing their cure Wesley is brief. Parents feed anger in their 
children in its worst form, namely revenge. “The silly mother 
says, ‘What, hurt my child? ‘Give me a blow for it.’ What hor- 
rid work is this! Will not the old murderer teach them this 
lesson fast enough?’®* Wise parents will teach just the opposite 
by setting the truth in their minds that vengeance belongs to 
God, that they are to return good, not evil, for evil. Parents 
arouse falsehood in children “by their unreasonable severity” 
which provokes dissimulation and lying, and by admiring any- 
thing ingenious and cunning in them. To cure it, teach them 
that the devil is the author of all lies, whether open or con- 
cealed, that they must “in little things and great, in jest or 
earnest, speak the very truth from their heart.’°* The tendency 
to injustice is increased when parents aid their children in cheat- 
ing each other, or applaud them when they are not aiding them. 
From their infancy the seeds of justice should be sown in their 
hearts, to render every one his due in small things as in great. 


 Toid., IT, 311. 
& Thid., II, 315. 
 Thid., II, 315. 


120 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Whenever children are permitted to be unkind to others or to 
hurt and give pain to anything that has life, such as birds, 
snakes, worms, or toads, their disease of unmercifulness is in- 
dulged. To cure it, teach them to “extend, in its measure, the 
rule of doing as they would be done by, to every animal what- 
soever. Ye that are truly kind parents, in the morning, in the 
evening, and all the day beside, press upon all your children, ‘to 
walk in love, as Christ also loved us, and gave himself for us’; 
to mind that one point, “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, 
dwelleth in God, and God in him.’ ’’®* 

Despite the severity Wesley recommends in breaking the 
will of children, he advised that generally, in so far as possible, 
the disciplinary work should be undertaken “by mildness, soft- 
ness, and gentleness,’ “by advice, persuasion, and reproof.’’® 
Neither extrame severity nor extreme tenderness should be 
favored, for religion is often frustrated if punishment is used 
more than is needful or is entirely lacking. Needless severity 
is especially to be avoided, otherwise “it will not be strange if 
religion stink in the nostrils of those that were so educated.’ 
To be sure, drastic methods of correction are to be employed, 
but only last, only after the trial and failure of all other methods. 
“And even then you should take the utmost care to avoid the 
very appearance of passion. Whatever is done should be done 
with mildness; nay, indeed, with kindness too. Otherwise your 
own spirit will suffer loss; and the child will reap little advan- 
tage.” All should be done “with kind severity.” 

In these statements Wesley comes very close to the gentle 
spirit of his mother, whose rules were drawn up with the aim 
that they should forestall future correction. Much wonder has 
been aroused because the austerity of his methods stands in such 
sharp contrast to his fondness for children and the characteristic 
kindliness of his personal dealings with them. It is not neces- 
sary to cite more than an instance or two illustrating his kindly 
attitude toward children, for it is well known. Southey gives 


67 Thid., II, 315-316. 79 Thid., II, 303. 


88 Thad., II, 303; VIT, 450. 1 Ibid., VII, 459. 
69 Tbid., VII, 459. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 121 


the oft-cited account of Wesley ordering his chaise every day, 
during one of his stays at Bath, a half-hour earlier than neces- 
sary, filling it with children and going to ride with them.” 
Wesley often speaks affectionately of children, remarks about 
their lovely faces, and is unable to believe that the wrath of God 
is abiding upon them.” His kindliness was especially marked 
in the later years of his life, as his Journal shows. He records 
with pleasure the affection which children gave him.“ One day, 
before the preaching service at Oldham, he was surprised by the 
way they flocked about him and closed in on him, not content to 
leave him until he had shaken each of them by the hand. He 
speaks of them as “such children as I never saw till now.” He 
loved children, but believed that the training of Christians should 
be strenuous and not effeminate, because of the malignant nature 
of the diseases that encumber them. In fact, he argued that 
the belief in the evil nature of folk does not exclude love for 
them, even though they should be reared with severity. “To 
describe human nature as deeply fallen, as far removed from 
both virtue and wisdom, does not argue that we despise it. We 
know by Scripture, as well as by sad experience, that men are 
unspeakably foolish and wicked. And such the Son of God knew 
them to be when he laid down his life for them. But this did 
not hinder him from loving them, no more than it does any of 
the children of God.’’*® If his advice to the Methodist people 
regarding clothes, riches, and luxuries in general, be recalled, 
it will be seen that he did not discriminate against children. 
The business of redemption is serious, and all mankind, young 
or old, demand serious treatment. A comparison with the prac- 
tice of the Port-Royalists may make Wesley’s position clearer. 
The bed-rock of the Port-Royal discipline and teaching was 
love for the pupil. But this did not exclude the employment of 
stringent methods in educating them. On the contrary, the gen- 





2A New History of Methodism, I, 220. 

73 Works, VI, 670; VII, 48, 49, 195; Journcl, V, 465. 
% Journal, VI, 73, 329. 

% Ibid., VI, 347. 

76 Works, V, 585. 


122 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


eral tenor of their program was a strict regulation of the conduct 
of their children and of everything that touched them. In them 
severity and devotion combined.” In both Wesley and the Port- 
Royalists the guiding motive was the welfare of the souls in 
their keeping. 


(b) Instruction 


The tasks of discipline and instruction, as has been indicated 
already, supplement each other in the religious education of 
children. Yet, practically, the work of each is distinct. Wesley 
set forth as definite rules for teaching as he did for the work of 
discipline. His sermon “On Family Religion” sets forth his 
method of teaching as explicitly as his sermon “On the Educa- 
tion of Children’ sets forth his manner of discipline. In it he 
gives parents the guiding principle of teaching in the compact 
sentence, “You should particularly endeavor to instruct your 
children, early, plainly, frequently, and patiently.””* He then 
develops each head separately. 

“Instruct them early.’”’ As soon as they are able to walk or 
talk their understanding opens and their reason dawns, and they 
are capable of instruction. ‘Truth shines upon the mind far 
earlier than is generally supposed. And from the start such 
matter should be taught the child as will turn its soul toward 
good things. “I know no cause why a parent should not just 
then begin to speak of the best things, the things of God,” as 
well as of trifling or bad things.” 

“Speak to them plainly’’—otherwise speaking to them early 
will be of no avail. To draw and fix the attention of children 
is one of the greatest difficulties in speaking to them.®® There- 
fore, “use such words as little children may understand, just as 
they use themselves. Carefully observe the few ideas which 
they have already, and endeavor to graft what you say upon 
them.’”’** For example, in speaking about God, to use the words 





™ Barnard: The Little Schools of Port-Royal, 72-73, 82, 90. 
78 Works, II, 304. 80 Jbid., VI, 464. 
79 Tbid., II, 304. 81 Tbsd., II, 304. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 123. 


of the Assembly’s Catechism that the chief end of man is to 
glorify God and enjoy him forever, is to employ terms beyond 
the capacity of little children.*’ Even the Catechism of the Es- 
tablished Church is too long and too hard for children of six or 
seven years of age.®* In speaking of God, interest children 
first in the sun and its warmth and its work in causing flowers 
and grass and trees to grow. Then point to God as the power 
behind the sun causing it to shine and giving it its warmth. 
From that it is an easy step to speak of the extent of his power 
and love, even to the smallest thing such as a child. “He loves 
you: he loves to do you good. He loves to make you happy. 
Should not you then love him? You love me, because I love 
you and do you good. But it is God that makes me love you. 
Therefore you should love him. And he will teach you how 
to love him.’’** The same method of procedure in dealing with 
children is advised in the sermon from the text, “There is one 
God.”*®> Wesley took occasion in his Life of Fletcher to illus- 
trate his meaning. One day Fletcher was speaking to a group of 
children and with great difficulty commanding their attention, 
when a robin flew into the house, diverting them still further. 
Whereupon with infinite tact he took the robin as his text and 
spoke to them successfully ‘‘on the harmlessness of that little 
creature, and the tender care of its Creator.’°® (Comenius seems 
to be reflected in Wesley’s advice to interest children in things 
and to speak to them on their own level. And there is reason 
to believe he practiced it himself. On one occasion, to illustrate 
his point to several clergymen and friends to whom he had been 
remarking upon the importance of using simple and plain words 
when speaking to children, he engaged to preach to a group of 
them on set date and to use no word of over two syllables. On 
the day fixed he preached to a group of five hundred and fifty 
Methodist Sunday-school children and literally fulfilled his 
pledge. The sermon that he used was the one he was fond of, 
which has already been mentioned several times, from the text, 





8 Tbid., II, 430-431. 8 Jhid., II, 431. 
8 Jbid., VII, 170. 86 Jhid., VI, 464. 
* Jbid., II, 304-305. 


124 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


“Come, ye children, hearken unto me: and I will teach you the 
fear of the Lord.”** 

“Teach them not only early and plainly, but frequently 
too.”’** Constant repetition is necessary if results are to be pro- 
duced. Something about God might well be said many times 
in the day, instead of talking exclusively about other matters 
and postponing the most important knowledge till children are 
older.°? The soul should be fed no less often than the body. 
“Tf you find this a tiresome task, there is certainly something 
wrong in your own mind. You do not love them enough; or 
you do not love him, who is your Father and their Father.”® 
It is particularly urgent to teach children frequently about God 
because from the time they enter the world “they are surrounded 
with idols,” innumerable rivals and substitutes of true religion. 
Such idols are the excitants of the senses, of the imagination, 
and the pride of life, which stimulate the love of the world, 
promising a happiness they cannot give. To omit from the pro- 
gram of instruction true religion, the only source of true happi- 
ness, is to suggest that it has no place in bringing happiness on 
earth, that the happiness it gives is deferred for the next world. 
It is important to press upon children continually that happiness 
is dependent upon God.** Therefore, teach them frequently. 

And, finally, if teaching is to bear any fruit, teach pa- 
tiently.°* By this is meant teach with perseverance, earnestly 
and diligently. ‘You must tell them the same thing ten times. 
over, or you do nothing.’”’*? ‘You must lay line upon line and 
precept upon precept with all diligence.°* Some children are 
inconceivably dull, others so giddy and perverse that if the 
teacher followed his own inclination he would give up in despair. 
“T remember to have heard my father asking my mother, ‘How 
could you have the patience to tell that blockhead the same thing 
twenty times over?’ She answered, ‘Why, if I had told him 


87 Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, IV, 119-120; Journal, VII, 


155, note 2, 
88 Works, II, 305. 2 Tbid., II, 305. 
89 Tbid., IT, 305. bid. VIL Of, 
90 Thid., II, 305. % Tbid., VII, 459. 


 Thid., II, 431. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 125 


but nineteen times, I should have lost all my labor.’ What 
patience indeed, what love, what knowledge is requisite for 
this!’’®® And even if after all patience no fruit is in evidence 
at once, it is possible that later the seeds will result in a reward- 
ing harvest, especially if God is urgently called upon in prayer. 
He it is that must open their understanding—“he alone can apply 
your words to their hearts: without which all your labor will be 
in vain.” So continually lift up your heart to him that there 
may be no delay in learning.*® 


(c) The Children’s Texts 


In order to assist parents, schoolmasters, and preachers in 
their teaching, Wesley prepared several tracts to be used as the 
basis of instruction. Of these the Lessons for Children and the 
Instructions for Children are the most important. Each has a 
preface that so illuminates Wesley’s method of instilling religion 
into children and summarizes what has just been said that they 
are inserted at this point. A description of the books themselves 
will be given later. The preface to the Lessons is as follows: 


To Att PARENTS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 


1. I have endeavored in the following lessons to select the plainest 
and the most useful portions of Scripture; such as a Christian may 
the most easily understand, and such as it most concerns him to 
know. These are set down in the same order, and (generally) the 
same words, wherein they are delivered by the Spirit of God. Where 
an expression is less easy to be understood, I have subjoined a word 
or two by way of explication; but taking care not to detain you from 
your great work, with Comments longer than the Text. 

2. I cannot but earnestly entreat you, to take good heed, how you 
teach these deep things of God. Beware of that common, but 
accursed, way of making children parrots, instead of Christians. 
Labor that, as far as is possible, they may understand every single 
sentence which they read. Therefore, do not make haste. Regard 
not how much, but how well, to how good purpose, they read. Turn 
each sentence every way, propose it in every light, and question them 


% Minutes, I, 68. 
% Works, II, 305. 


126 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


continually on every point; if by any means, they may not only 
read, but inwardly digest the words of eternal life. 

3. Meantime you will not fail, with all diligence to commend both 
yourselves and your little ones to Him, without whom you well 
know neither is he that planteth, anything, nor he that watereth. 
You are sensible, He alone giveth the increase. May He both min- 
ister bread for your own food, and multiply your seed sown, and 
increase the fruits of your righteousness.%? 


The following is the preface to the Instructions: 


To Att PARENTS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 


1. I have laid before you in the following tract the true principles. 
of the Christian education of children. These should, in all reason, 
be instilled into them as soon as ever they can distinguish good from 
evil. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then it is 
certainly the very first thing they should learn. And why may they 
not be taught the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of letters 
at the same time? 

2. A great part of what follows is translated from the French; 
cnly it is here cast into another form, and divided into sentences, 
that it may be the more easily understood either by the teacher or the 
learners. And although the great truths herein contained are more 
immediately addressed to children, yet are they worthy the deepest 
consideration both of the oldest and the wisest men. 

3. Let them be deeply engraven in your own hearts, and you will 
spare no pains in teaching them to others. Above all, let them not 
read or say one line without understanding and minding what they 
say. Try them over and over; stop them short, almost in every 
sentence ; and ask them, ““What was it you said last? Read it again: 
what do you mean by that?” So that, if it be possible, they 
may pass by nothing, till it has taken some hold upon them. By this 
means they will learn to think as they learn to read; they will grow 
wiser and better every day. And you will have the comfort of 
observing that by the same steps they advance in the knowledge of 
these poor elements they will also grow in grace, in the knowledge 
of God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ.%8 


Wesley prepared the Lessons in order to guide his people 
to the most useful portions of the Old Testament and the 
Apocrypha. He did not make a similar abridgment of the New 





*” Wesley, Lessons for Children, 3, 4. 
%8 Works, VII, 523. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 127 


Testament because he felt that all of it should be read.*® Every 
book of the Old Testament is represented in the Lessons except 
Ruth, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and the Minor Proph- 
ets. One wonders why Wesley did not substitute Ruth for 
Esther, and why he did not include some portions, even though 
brief, of Amos, Hosea, and Malachi. One also wonders why 
he did not present the story of Jonah in summarized form, A 
list showing the topics and the sections of Scripture from which 
his selections are taken is included in the Appendix inasmuch 
as it has never before been compiled. 

Wesley gave the Instructions for Children chief place 
among the textbooks for children in the home. He directed 
the preachers’ assistants to see that every Methodist society was 
well supplied with it, so that every home could possess a copy.1 
He believed it contained “the best matter that we can possibly 
teach” children, and claimed never to have “seen anything com- 
parable to them, either for depth of sense, or plainness of lan- 
guage.”*°! Although it is not an original work of Wesley’s, 
yet it is an accurate presentation of his theology.’ It is in such 
form as children can readily understand. The sentences are 
short and compact, occupying, for the most part, one or two lines 
each. The tone throughout is dogmatic and almost imperative. 
It is divided into six sections and contains in all fifty-eight les- 
sons. Section one is a catechism of twelve lessons on God, 
the creation and fall of man, the redemption of man, the means 
of grace, and hell and heaven.’** This is the catechism which 
Wesley thought more proper for children than the Assembly’s 
Catechism. Section two deals more specifically with the nature 
“Of God, and of the Soul of Man,” expanding the teaching of 
the catechism on these topics.*°* Section three is entitled “How 

99 Minutes, I, 17. 

100 Works, V, 226. 

101 Tbid., VI, 467, note 2; VII, 94. 

102 The Instructions for Children is chiefly a translation from the French work 
of Abbé Fleury and M. Pierre Poiret entitled, Les Principes solides de la religion 
et dela vie Chrétienne appliqués al’ éducation des enfants. See Green, Bibliography, 


Nos. 62, 117, 118, 174. 
108 Wesley, Instructions for Children, 123-129. 10 Thid., 129-133. 


128 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


to Regulate Our Desires.’”*° The desire of the soul is defined 
as “the heart or the will.” This section inculcates the lesson of 
giving up self-will to the will of God and desiring only those 
things that please him. It teaches the nature of prayer and sets 
down the desires that should be voiced every time prayer 1s 
offered, and gives a form of prayer as a guide. It concludes 
with the Lord’s Prayer, defining it as “the best prayer in the 
world.” Section four is on “How to Regulate Our Understand- 
ing.’”’?°° It teaches that the understanding is ‘made for truth, 
that is, for God himself, for his word and his works,” that 
atheism is the lot of mankind since the Fall, that only through 
the eyes of the soul, which God alone can open, can anything be 
known either of God or the things of God. It sets forth regula- 
tions concerning one’s belief, and gives the Apostles’ Creed as 
the best summary of belief. Section five teaches “How to Regu- 
late Our Joy.”*°? Man’s joy should rest not in the world and 
in the things of the world, but in God, in the knowledge of his 
great attributes, and in obedience to him. Fondness for pretty 
things and for money will be destroyed in one who makes God 
his chief joy. He will also put away lying, pride, and revenge, 
for they lead to separation from God. But joy should be mixed 
with fear, else “it will cover the greatness of our corruption, and 
so hinder us from seeking to be cured of it.’ The last section 
is on “How to Regulate Our Practice.”?8 “The true spirit of 
the Christian life and practice’ is opposite to the spirit of the 
world and of corrupt nature. It leads to a life of self-denial and 
works of charity for mankind in humility and penitence, with- 
out desire for reward or self-pleasing. Eating and drinking 
especially should be done only in such manner as will advance 
the glory of God. “Suffer me not, O Lord, to eat and drink 
like a brute beast, only by a brutal appetite: much less do thou 
suffer me to follow herein the motions of my corrupt nature.” 
The Ten Commandments, together with Christ’s two command- 





10 Thid., 1337143. 
106 Thid., 143-150. 
107 Thid., 150-159 
108 Jhid,, 159-172. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS . r29 


ments of love to God and neighbor, are given as the regulative 
guide to practice, and are followed by brief expositions of their 
meaning. The Instructions concludes with an exhortation to 
parents to follow its teachings. “Happy are those who despising 
the rules of the diabolical and antichristian world, train up the 
precious souls of their children wholly by the rules of Jesus 
Christ.” 

The Tokens for Children is another text recommended by 
Wesley to be used in teaching children, although it is mentioned 
but once in his writings. The Conference of 1744 advised it as 
a lesson book for the preachers to use along with the Instruc- 
tions.°® According to Green’s Bibliography of Wesley’s works, 
it consists of ten carefully abridged examples of the conversion, 
holy living, and dying of young children, from 4A Token for 
Children, by the Rev. James Janeway.’*® Janeway’s work con- 
tains the records of thirteen pious children between the ages of 
two and thirteen. Their religious experiences resemble some- 
what the experiences of the pious children which Wesley records 
in his Journal. Janeway’s accounts, however, are written in 
greater detail and are more somber in character. The Preface 
addressed to the children is especially frightful in its depiction 
of the consequences to visit those who die unconverted.*** One 
is led to think that Wesley decided for judicious reasons to 
relinquish his edition of this work some time after the first Con- 
ference in favor of the Instructions. He mentions the Lessons 
and Instructions again and again, but does not refer to the 
Tokens after this Conference of 1744. 

Wesley considered education in prayer to be a part of the 
religious training of children, as is seen from the Instructions. 
Children should be brought up to use this means of grace as 
well as the Scriptures. They should be led to pray in private as 
well as to participate in family worship. Thus, Wesley at- 
tributes the sudden end of a promising revival among the Kings- 
wood boys “chiefly to their total neglect of private prayer. 





109 Minutes, I, 12. 
110 Green, Bibliography, No. 124. 
11 Janeway, A Token for Children, 9, 10. 


130 WESLEY: ON RELIGIOUS EDUCA TION 


Without this, all the other means which they enjoyed could 
profit them nothing.”’"* But those who educate children in 
prayer should discriminate and take into account the ages of the 
children and grade their prayers according to their spiritual ex- 
perience. “Although there may be some use in teaching very 
young children to ‘say their prayers daily’; yet I judge it to be 
utterly impossible to teach any to ‘practice prayer’ till they are 
awakened. For what is prayer but the desire of the soul ex- 
pressed in words to God, either inwardly or outwardly? How, 
then, will you teach them to express a desire who feel no desire 
at all?’448) But as soon as the child has become a believer, even 
though but a beginner, he should be stimulated to pray. To 
guide children in this aspect of their religious life Wesley pre- 
pared forms of prayer to be used every morning and evening in 
the week, as he did for the use of adults and families.4* To 
these he added “A Prayer for Relations, Friends, &c., to be used 
after Morning and Evening Prayer,” and two others, “Grace 
before Meat” and “After Meals.” He prefaced them in these 
words: 

My dear Child—A lover of your soul has here drawn up a few 
prayers, in order to assist you in that great duty. Be sure that you 
do not omit, at least morning and evening, to present yourself upon 
your knees before God. You have mercies to pray for, and bless- 
ings to praise God for. But take care that you do not mock God, 
drawing near with your lips, while your heart is far from him. God 
sees you, and knows your thoughts; therefore, see that you not only 
speak with your lips, but pray with your heart. And that you may 
not ask in vain, see that you forsake sin, and make it your endeavor 
to do what God has shown you ought; because God says, ‘“‘The 
prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord.” Ask, then, 
of God for the blessings you want, in the name, and for the sake, of 
Jesus Christ; and God will hear and answer you, and do more for 
you than you can either ask or think.15 


These prayers voice the children’s needs and stimulate 
higher aspirations. There is nothing puerile about them. If 
anything, they are, in form and content, more appropriate for 


12 Journal, V, 484. 14 Thid., VI, 417-426. 
13 Works, VII, 95. M5 Tbid., 417. 


PARAICWOLAR@LHEORIES ANDo METHODS: 7131 


children of riper years than for the youngest, for those “awak- 
ened,” to use Wesley’s word. ‘The style of the prayers is bib- 
lical, and many phrases are borrowed from the Scriptures, espe- 
cially from the Psalms. The prayer for Monday evening is an 
adaptation of the general confession from the Book of Common 
Prayer.*® The chief attitudes which Wesley desired to arouse 
through the prayers are reverence for God, due sense of the cor- 
ruption of human nature, receptivity to spiritual things, a desire 
to become more spiritual, and a deep sincerity. Some of the re- 
curring petitions are for pardon, for strength against tempta- 
tion, for God’s blessing on the child’s studies, for the opening 
of his understanding, and for his advancement in the means of 
grace. The characteristic points in Wesley’s theology are fre- 
quently brought out. They appear in such petitions as, “Give 
me, O Lord, that highest learning, to know thee; and that best 
wisdom, to know myself;** “O Lord, do thou teach me the 
meaning of the new birth, that I, a child of wrath, may become 
a child of grace. Lord, take away the veil from my heart, that 
I may know my sinful nature.”’"** The “Prayer for Relations, 
Friends, &c.,”’ makes provision for the social element in prayer. 
Through it the child asks God’s blessing upon his parents, teach- 
ers, friends, superiors, and enemies, his mercy upon the afflicted 
and the suffering, and the coming of the knowledge and love of 
God upon all mankind.*?® Each of the morning and evening 
prayers concludes with the Lord’s Prayer. 

Another provision that Wesley made for the spiritual and 
intellectual guidance of children was his publication in 1790 
of forty-four hymns selected from Charles Wesley’s Hymns 
for Children and Others of Riper Years, which he issued as 
Hymns for Children. According to Green, more than half of 
the hymns are taken from the section in his brother’s work en- 
titled Hymns for the Youngest, “and amongst these are some of 
Charles Wesley’s sweetest verses.’’*° The Preface Wesley wrote 
to his selection is as follows: 





6 Thid., VI, 419-420. 19 Thid., VI, 426. 
7 Thid., V1, 422. 120 Green, Bibliography, No. 414. 
118 Jiid., VI, 423. 


ee WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


There are two ways of writing or speaking to children; the one 
is, to let ourselves down to them; the other, to lift them up to us. 
Doctor Watts has wrote in the former way, and has succeeded 
admirably well, speaking to children as children, and leaving them 
as he found them. The following hymns are written on the other 
plan: they contain strong and manly sense, yet expressed in such 
plain and easy language as even children may understand. But 
when they do understand them, they will be children no longer, only 
in years and stature.!*1 


This Preface, like the prefaces to the Lessons and the In- 
structions, indicates Wesley’s conviction that teaching should 
aim not simply to impart information but to develop the power 
of the pupil to think, and that it should lead him to the experi- 
mental knowledge of religion. As this collection of hymns was 
one of Wesley’s last publications, it shows that his solicitude for 
the welfare of children was not abated even in his extreme old 
age. 


III. Religious Education in the Methodist Societies 

The Methodist preachers were detailed by Wesley to coop- 
erate with parents in the training of children. He reminded 
them that preaching once or twice a week was the least part of 
their office,** that not even preaching as frequently as once or 
twice a day would excuse them from other duties.1%? “What 
avails public preaching alone, though we could preach like 
angels?”’*** The faithful shepherd of souls will be busy with 
the cure and the care of the parish. “To ‘seek and save that 
which is lost;’ to bring souls from Satan to God; to instruct 
the ignorant; to reclaim the wicked; to convince the gainsayer; 
to direct their feet into the way of peace, and then keep them 
therein; to follow them step by step, lest they turn out of the 
way, and advise them in their doubts and temptations; to lift 
up them that fall; to refresh them that are faint; and to comfort 
the weak-hearted; to administer various helps, as the variety of 
occasions require, according to their several necessities—these 
are parts of our office; all this we have undertaken at the peril 


121 Thid. 123 Minutes, I, 122. 
122 Works, V, 126. 124 Thid., I, 62; Works, V, 213. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 133 


of our own soul.”’*? Among other things, then, the preacher 


must be an instructor of religion. It is noteworthy that the design 
of the first Methodist Conference, held in 1744 at the Foundery, 
which in many ways contained the germ-cell of the later devel- 
opment of Methodism, should have been to consider: ‘1. What 
to teach. 2. How to teach. And, 3. What to do? i.e., how to 
regulate our doctrine, discipline, and practice.’’’*® 

In general, there are three points in Wesley’s outline of the 
teaching work of the ministry as it relates to children. In the 
first place, the preacher is to revive and guide family worship. 
He can best do this by using as a pattern the method of family 
prayer Philip Henry (1631-1696) employed in his own home 
and encouraged among his parishioners. According to his son 
and biographer, Matthew Henry, the famous commentator, 
Philip Henry made a business of family prayer. One of his 
famous utterances is, “We are that really which we are rela- 
tively. It is not so much what we are at church, as what we are 
in our families. Those do well that pray morning and evening 
in their families; those do better that pray and read the Scrip- 
tures; but those do best of all that pray, and read, and sing 
psalms: and Christians should covet earnestly the best gifts.’’?*7 
He had a set order of service in his morning and evening family 
worship. A short prayer was offered at the opening, then a 
psalm sung, and the Scriptures read and expounded. This done, 
the children were required to give some account of what they 
had heard, whereupon the meaning of it was further fixed in 
their minds by their parents. A longer prayer followed. The 
worship concluded with a benediction or the doxology. Before 
the family separated the children would ask a blessing of their 
parents, which was invariably given. On Thursday evenings 


125 Works, V, 126. 

126 Minutes, I, 4; Works, V, 194. 

127 Henry, Life of Philip Henry, 43. According to the Minutes of the Con- 
ference of 1765, Wesley directed the preachers to ‘‘read publickly that part of 
Mr. Philip Henry’s Life’”” which contained his method of family prayer.—Min- 
utes, I, 51. It is impossible to say whether the reference is to the Life by Mat- 
thew Henry or not. Wesley was acquainted with his commentaries and may 
have known this work. 


134 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


special pains were taken to catechize the children. On Saturday 
evenings they were called upon to recite what they had learned 
during the week.’** As far as can be ascertained, this is Philip 
Henry’s method of family prayer which Wesley instructed his 
preachers to urge the Methodists to adopt.**® It is evident that 
the children hold a central place in it. 

In the second place, the preacher himself is to teach the 
children in the home. One of the stated questions Wesley asked 
those seeking admittance into the Methodist Conference was, “Will 
you diligently and earnestly instruct the children, and visit 
from house to house?’**° This question, it may be remarked, 
is still asked of all candidates for full membership in any Con- 
ference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.’** Wesley felt that 
there is no better method for instructing from house to house 
than that set forth by Richard Baxter in his Gildas Salvianus: 
the Reformed Pastor, and urged that his preachers adopt it.*** 
He accordingly gave them a summary of it, adding special ref- 
erences to the instruction of children. Every preacher should 
make a systematic visitation of the homes represented in his so- 
ciety, instructing both young and old, using as a text the /n- 
structions for Children. The particular method suggested in 
doing this is to take each person apart by himself and deal 
closely with his condition and greatest spiritual need, catechizing 
him, instructing him according to his capacity in the principles 
of the Christian religion, and, if he is unconverted, impressing 
him with a sense of his condition and endeavoring to win him 
to an acceptance of Christ. “Before you leave them, engage 
the head of each family, to call all his family every Sunday, 
before they go to bed, and hear what they can rehearse, and so 
continue till they have learned all The Instructions perfectly. 
And afterward take care that they do not forget what they have 
learned.” ‘The sum is: Go into every house in course, and 


128 Thid., 43-53. 

129 Minutes, I, 51, 68; Works, V, 223. 

180 Thid., I, 52. 

131 Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1920, 133. 

1382 Minutes, 1, 62-67, 68; Works, V, 213-217, 223. See The Practical Works 
of The Rev. Richard Baxter, XIV, Chapters 6 and 7. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 135 


teach every one therein, young and old; if they belong to us, to 
be Christians inwardly and outwardly.’’*? 

The third duty of the preacher with respect to the religious 
education of children is to form societies for them within the 
larger society and meet them regularly. The epoch-making Con- 
ference of 1744 did not leave the children out of account but 
made provision for their oversight. The question was asked: 
“Might not the children in every place be formed into a little 
society?’ To this the answer was given: “Let the preachers 
try, by meeting them together, and giving them suitable exhor- 
tations. At each meeting, we may first set them a lesson in the 
Instructions or Tokens for Children. 2. Hear them repeat it. 
3. Explain it to them in an easy, familiar manner. 4. Often 
ask, “What have I been saying?’ And strive to fasten it on 
their hearts.”*** The Conference of 1766 directed the preach- 
ers to spend an hour twice a week with the children in every 
society where there are ten of them. To the objection that “TI 
have no gift for this,’ the answer was given, “Gift or no gift, 
you are to do it, else you are not called to be a Methodist 
preacher.”**? Again, the Conference of 1768, legislating to 
meet conditions in the large towns where parish work was heav- 
ier than elsewhere, gave special instructions to the preachers to 
meet the children an hour a week, “whether you like it or not.’’?*° 
By these successive enactments Wesley made provision for the 
membership of the children in the societies and for their reli- 
gious instruction. Nothing much besides this can be said with 
respect to the relation of the children to the societies. Appar- 
ently, they joined them as members on trial and as members in 
full on the same terms with their elders.**” 

Wesley expected that the Methodist preachers who entered 
his service should give themselves to diligent study to meet the 
requirements of their teaching office more efficiently. He held 


183 Tbid., I, 68; Works, V, 223. 

134 Minutes, I, 12. 

1% Tbid., I, 68. 

136 Thid., I, 81. 

87 Journal, II, 211 (diary); V, 525; VI, 515, note 3. 


136 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


a lofty ideal for all clergymen, as his “Address to the Clergy” 
shows. They should have special gifts of grace, of person- 
ality, and of intellect.14° They should have “all the courtesy of 
a gentleman, joined with the correctness of a scholar.’*? It 
was a current opinion that one who was too ignorant for any 
other profession could become a minister. In answer to this 
Wesley said, “A blockhead can never ‘do well enough for a par- 
son.’ ”4° “Oh, how can these who themselves know nothing 
aright, impart knowledge to others? how instruct them in all 
the variety of duty, to God, their neighbor, and themselves? 
How will they guide them through all the mazes of error, through 
all the entanglements of sin and temptation? How will they 
apprize them of the devices of Satan, and guard them against 
all the wisdom of the world?” ‘The Methodist preachers were 
to devote their mornings to study—‘from six in the morning 
till twelve (allowing an hour for breakfast).”*** They were 
to follow the courses of study, including the classics, which 
Wesley prescribed for them.*** If they had no taste for reading 
and could not “contract a taste for it by use,” they were to re- 
turn to their trades.4* So desirous was Wesley of having a 
trained leadership that he planned for many years to “have a 
seminary for laborers,’ and when the New Kingswood School 
was built he hoped that some of his preachers might receive pre- 
liminary training there,’** and designed that the children trained 
there should be “fit as to all acquired que Beaman for the work 
of the ministry.’’** 


IV. Religious Education in the Schools 


Insight into the application of Wesley’s educational prin- 
ciples to schools, as has already been stated, is gained chiefly 


1388 Works, VI, 217-231. 

139 Thid., 220. 

10 Thid., 223. 

Ml Minutes, I, 16; Works, V, 222. 

14 Publications of the Wesley Historical Soctety, No. 1, 28-29. 

143 Minutes, I, 67; Works, V, 223. 

M44 Simon, John Wesley and the Methodist Societies, 218, 262, 315. 
45 Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, No. 1, 54. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS | 137 


from a study of the charity school at the Foundery Society and 
the boarding’ school at Kingswood. References in Wesley’s 
writings to the Foundery School, scant though they are, lead 
one to the conclusion that the underlying theories upon which it 
was conducted closely resemble the principles governing the 
school at Kingswood. The Foundery School was an elementary 
day school, and could not from the nature of.the case admit of 
rules covering such various phases of life as the boarding school 
of higher education at Kingswood. It aimed, however, to keep 
strict control of its pupils during school hours, and to give them 
sound religious training as well as to teach them the elements 
of learning. School hours were from six to twelve, and from 
one to five. The children were prohibited from speaking in 
school except to the masters. They were permitted no play days. 
They were obliged to attend the morning sermon. Any child 
that was absent from the school two days in one week or failed 
to observe the rules was expelled. Two stewards were ap- 
pointed to attend to the administration of the school, and among 
their duties was the spiritual oversight of the pupils. They met 
the children twice a week to pray with them and exhort them, 
and to inquire into their progress in grace and their observance 
of the rules of the school. They also consulted once a week with 
the parents and exhorted them to train their children in the 
ways of the school. Some time before 1772 the school was 
discontinued.1*° 

It will be remembered that a dearth of the right sort of 
schools for boys led Wesley to found the Kingswood School 
for the higher education of Methodist children. He intended 
that it should overcome the “palpable blemishes” of the general 
run of boarding schools then in existence. He disapproved of 
the current schools chiefly on four grounds. In the first place, 
most of them are situated in large towns. The attention of the 
children is diverted from the ends of learning every time they 
go abroad, and they come into promiscuous contact with large 
numbers of town children, who by example and advice retard 
their learning and make havoc of their religion. Secondly, 


146 Works, V, 188-189. 


138 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


these schools are not sufficiently careful in the selection of pupils, 
receiving all who apply, “however corrupted already, perhaps in 
principle (though that is not quite so frequent) as well as prac- 
tice.” Children are not likely to retain their religion, if they 
have any, with such companionship. In the third place, “in many 
schools, the masters have no more religion than the scholars,” 
and are not instilled in the principles of Christianity nor inter- 
ested in its practice. “Consequently, they are nothing concerned, 
whether their scholars are Papists or Protestants, Turks or 
Christians: they look upon this as no part of their business; they 
take no thought about it.” Lastly, the schools of the day are 
defective in instruction. They rarely teach arithmetic, writing, 
geography, and “chronology”; they teach neither Greek nor 
Latin thoroughly; and “there are some schools of note wherein 
no Hebrew at all is taught.” The classics in use are imperfect 
in style and sense, and obscene and profane in content. Nor are 
they read in the order of their difficulty, the easiest often read 
last and the most difficult first.**" 

Wesley in founding his school at Kingswood aimed to 
avoid these outstanding defects. He intended that the children 
educated there should receive thorough intellectual education and 
sound religious training. With this in mind he guided the cur- 
riculum and the government of the school. 

The Kingswood curriculum was encyclopedic, and com- 
bined classical and religious instruction to a remarkable degree. 
It was designed to include “every branch of useful learning, 
from the very alphabet.”**8 According to the Short Account of 
the School in Kingswood, Near Bristol, published in 1768, the 
scholars were to be taught “reading, writing, arithmetic, Eng- 
lish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, history, geography, chronol- 
ogy, rhetoric, logic, ethics, geometry, algebra, physics, music.”'*® 
In the Plain Account of Kingswood School, published in 1781, 
“natural philosophy, and metaphysics” are added to these.’ 





147 Thid., VII, 336-337. 

48 Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, No. 1, 54. 
19 Works, VII, 332. 

150 Thid., 340. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 139 


And it is quite possible that there were other subjects." The 
curriculum printed in the short account shows that religion was 
given a large place in the school. The texts from which reading 
was taught in all eight classes were moral and religious books. 
It was probably intended that religion should be inculcated, in 
part at least, indirectly. The following books were used in 
reading: the Instructions for Children, Lessons for Children, 
The Manners of the Ancient Christians (extracted from Fleury), 
Cave’s Primitive Christianity, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Life 
of Mr. Haliburton, The Life of Mr. De Renty, Law’s Christian 
Perfection and Serious Call. Other moral and religious texts 
employed are Corderu Colloquia Selecta, Historia Selectae, Cas- 
tellio’s Kempis, Cornelius Nepos, Select Dialogues of Erasmus, 
Moral and Sacred Poems, “Genesis,” “The Gospels,” and “The 
Epistles of St. John.” 

Wesley himself wrote the grammars and the textbook 
in logic.°* He likewise edited all the other books, expur- 
gating them carefully, “that nothing immodest or profane 
be found in any of our authors. ... But this is not all. 
We take care that our books be not only inoffensive but use- 
ful too; that they contain as much strong, sterling sense, and 
as much genuine morality, as possible; yea, and Christian moral- 
ity. For what good reason can be assigned why we should leave 
this out of account? Why should not even children be taught, 
so far as they are capable, the oracles of God?”’*** Thus, in so 
far as possible, Wesley made the secular books contribute to the 
religious purpose of the school. Where this was impossible, 
he was careful that none of them worked counter to it. 

The conditions of admission into the school were stringent. 
Not every child that applied was to be admitted, “but, if possi- 
ble, such as had some thoughts of God, and some desire of sav- 
ing their souls; and such whose parents desired they should not 
be almost, but altogether, Christians.”*°* Parents were therefore 
informed of this condition and requested to read the rules of the 





18 History of the Kingswood School, by Three Old Boys, 29. 
18 Works, VII, 332-333. 14 Thid., 340. 
83 Tbid., 609-745. 185 Thid., 339. 


140 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


school before they sent their children to it, being assured that 
neither “favor or affection” would be shown to any nor excep- 
tions made. They were further obliged to agree that their 
children would observe all the rules, and that they would not 
take them from the school, even for a day, until they were ready 
to take them once for all. Wesley gives as his reason for this 
rule that if children are permitted to go back and forth between 
the school and their homes, they would “unlearn’” in a short 
time what it takes a long time to learn, and would “contract a 
prejudice to exact discipline.”*® ‘The children, therefore, of 
tender parents, so called (who are indeed offering up their sons 
and daughters unto devils), have no business here.’’?°* 

Wesley enacted regulations concerning the age and number 
of boys taught in the school. His practice seemed to vary with 
regard to this from time to time. According to the Minutes of 
the Conference of 1744, it was designed to admit boys only be- 
tween the ages of six and ten.°° According to Wesley’s Short 
Account of the school, those as old as twelve could enter.1? 
But in 1770 Wesley wrote to the headmaster, Joseph Benson, 
“T will take none that is above nine years old.” It seems, how- 
ever, that this was only a temporary arrangement of Wesley’s, 
for at the time of his writing there was “a gracious visitation” 
of the Spirit in the school and he wished to be particularly care- 
ful to guard the children from corruption.*®® The settled policy 
of the school was undoubtedly to receive children between the 
years of six and twelve. The ground for setting the age limit 
at twelve was that “a child could not well before that age be 
rooted either in bad habits or ill principles.’’*** 

Not only was admittance into the school to be limited to 
boys of restricted ages, but also the size of the group enrolled 
at any one time was to be strictly controlled. The school was 
built to accommodate fifty children, besides masters and sery- 


136 Tbid. 

157 Thid., 333. 

158 Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, No. I, 54. 
18 Works, VII, 332. 

160 Thid., 68. 

161 Thid., VII, 339. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS - 11 


ants.'°? The enrollment was ordinarily allowed to reach that 


number. Wesley stated, however, on one occasion that he de- 
sired only thirty.*°* He was against larger numbers because 
they added to the burdens of the masters and increased the dif- 
ficulty of proper control. “It is scarce possible to keep them in 
so exact order as we might do a smaller number.’”’!™ 
Wesley chose masters for the school with utmost care. 
Twice he makes reference to searching “the three kingdoms” 
for such as would meet the high qualifications he held for that 
office.*®° They must be men not only of intellectual attainments 
but also of genuine piety, utterly devoted to God, and patterns 
of holiness to the children.°® They must seek “nothing on 
earth, neither pleasure, nor ease, nor profit, nor the praise of 
men; but simply to glorify God, with their bodies and spirits, 
in the best manner they were capable of.”"*’ They must be 
punctilious in executing his plans and enforcing the rules of the 
school. As soon as Wesley was disappointed in them and could 
not prevail upon them to carry out his designs, he discharged 
them at once and sought others.’°* A terse letter to Thomas 
Welch, who had applied for the position as teacher of English, 
reveals Wesley’s expectations of the masters. 
BristoL, August 16, 1783. 

Dear THomMAs—You seem to be the man I want. As to salary, 
you will have thirty pounds a year; board, etc., will be thirty more. 
But do not come for money. 1. Do not come at all, unless purely 
to raise a Christian school. 2. Anybody behaving ill I will turn away 
’ immediately. 3. I expect you to be in school eight hours a day. 
4. In all things I expect you should be circumspect. But you will 
judge better by considering the printed rules. The sooner you come 
the better—I am your affectionate brother, JoHN Westey.'® 


The general rules of the house, taken from the Short Ac- 
count, illustrate Wesley’s theories of religious education and 
are the counterpart of his system of training and discipline in 


162 [bid., VII, 338. 16 Tbid., VII, 334, 337-338. 
168 Journal, V, 340. 167 Thid., 338-339. 
164 Thid., V, 340-341. 168 Journal, III, 530-531. 


165 Works, VII, 122, 338. 
16 Quoted in the History of Kingswood School, by Three Old Boys, 50. 


142 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


the family. At the thirteenth Methodist Conference, held in 
17506, these rules were read and considered one by one and were 
pronounced “agreeable to Scripture and reason.’**° This ver- 
dict was in harmony with Wesley’s continuous attitude toward 
them. The general rules of the house are these :— 


First. The children rise at four, winter and summer, and spend 
the time till five in private; partly in reading, partly in singing, partly 
in self-examination or meditation (if capable of it), and partly in 
prayer. They at first use a short form (which is varied continu- 
ally) and then pray in their own words. 

Secondly. At five they all meet together.“ From six they work 
till breakfast; for as we have no play days (the school being taught 
every day in the year but Sunday), so neither do we allow any time 
for play on any day; he that plays when he is a child will play when 
he is a man. 

On fair days they work according to their strength, in the garden; 
on rainy days, in the house. Some of them also learn music; and 
some of the larger will be employed in philosophical experiments ; 
but particular care is taken that they never work alone, but always in 
the presence of a master. 

We have three masters: one for teaching reading, and two for the 
languages. 

Thirdly. The school begins at seven, in which languages are 
taught till nine; and then writing, &c, till eleven. At eleven the chil- 
dren walk or work. At twelve they dine, and then work or sing till 
one. They diet nearly thus: 

Breakfast.—Milk porridge and water gruel, by turns. 
Supper.—Bread and butter or cheese, and milk, by turns. 
Dinner.—Sunday.—Cold roast beef. 
Monday.—Hashed meat and apple dumplings. 
Tuesday.—Boiled mutton. 
Wednesday.—Vegetables and dumplings. 
Thursday.—Boiled mutton or beef. 
Friday.—Vegetables and dumplings. And so in Lent. 
Saturday.—Bacon and greens, apple dumplings. 


They drink water at meals: nothing between meals. On Friday, if 
they choose it, they fast till three in the afternoon. Experience 
shows this is so far from impairing health, that it greatly conduces 
to it. 

170 Journal, IV, 186. 
171 For ‘“‘public Worship,” according to the Minutes of the Conference of 
1748.—Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, No. 1, 55. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS 143 


Fourthly. From one to four, languages are taught; and then 
writing &c, till five. At five begins the hour of private prayer; 
from six they walk or work till supper; a little before seven the 
public service begins; at eight they go to bed, the youngest first. 

Fifthly. They lodge all in one room (now in two), in which a 
lamp burns all night. Every child lies by himself. A master lies 
at each end of the room. All their beds have mattresses on them, 
not feather beds. 

Sixthly. On Sunday, at six, they dress and breakfast; at seven, 
learn hymns or poems; at nine, attend the public service; at twelve, 
dine and sing; at two, attend the public service; and at four, are 
privately instructed?” 


This time-table of the house, in conjunction with the time- 
table of the school, was drawn up with the sole aim of making 
the Kingswood boys Christians. If forcing could produce that 
result, it would succeed. Certainly, there is ample provision in 
it for public and private worship, for careful oversight, and for 
the prevention of demoralizing idleness. It shows some slight 
appreciation of the differences in individual capacity. But there 
is very little evidence in it that he who drew it up understood 
child nature. It leans too much toward that extreme severity 
which Wesley says, in the Thought on the Manner of Educating 
Children, should not be used as.the method of instilling religion 
into children. One would agree with Fitchett that it “was admir- 
ably calculated to make them either lunatics or hypocrites.’’*” 

In the Plain Account Wesley quotes several of the rules of 
this time-table, expands them, and gives fuller reasons for adopt- 
ing them. He found, he says, after years of experience, that 
“the reasons of what is peculiar in our method” were plain 
enough to himself, but they were scarcely known by the rest of 
mankind. He was therefore led to enlarge somewhat upon 
them.'* By studying these reasons in the light of his ideas of 
education in the family and of his general theological position, 
it is possible to enter more deeply into the motives that gave rise 
to the rules. 


172 Works, VII, 333-334. 

178 Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, 494. Used by permission of John 
Murray for Smith, Elden & Co., London. 

1% Works, VII, 336. 


144. WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Several of these rules may be grouped around Wesley’s 
concern for the physical health of folk in general and his desire 
to keep the boys from softness and effeminacy. The prohibition 
of feather beds and the enforcement of moderation in eating were 
calculated to promote health and hardihood. Eating between 
meals was forbidden “lest they should insensibly contract habits 
which are neither good for body nor mind.’*” The early hour 
of rising, Wesley found by years of experience and observation 
to conduce to good health and to prevent nearly all nervous dis- 
orders.*’® So convinced was he of its advantages that in his 
Primitive Physick he advises tender and weakly persons especially 
to rise at four or five o'clock.” The rule regarding walking 
and work reflects in part his acquaintance with the Moravian 
Orphanage House in Herrnhut, as these were the only provis- 
ions the Moravian authorities there made for recreation.*® 
Wesley regarded systematic exercise as indispensable to health, 
especially in the case of the studious.‘7° He considered walking 
as the best form of it for those able to bear it.*®° 

Wesley’s enactment forbidding play has provoked wide- 
spread criticism. But it is not irrational in the light of his 
theory of human nature and its remaking. There is no doubt, 
as Rigg suggests in his Living Wesley, that the coarse and law- 
less play Wesley saw when he was a student at the Charterhouse 
School had much to do with his restrictions at the Kingswood 
School.*** But a deeper reason than this must have motivated 
him, for he never speaks of that great school except in the fond- 
est terms. On the contrary, he retained for it “a remarkable 
predilection,”’!*? and returned to it again and again to stroll 
about its walks and to pray, meditate, and write.’** As a mat- 
ter of fact, it is unfair to Wesley to single out for criticism his 
rule against play. It is in keeping with the general tenor of 
the government of the house, which was dictated by the desire 


15 Thtd., VII, 340. 179 Wesley, Primitive Physick, 15-16. 
Ol d., V 11.1330; 180 Thid., 15. 

177 Wesley, Primitive Physick, 15. 181 Rigg, The Living Wesley, 30. 

178 Journal, II, 51. 182 Moore, Life of John Wesley, I, 101. 


183 Journal, II, 129 (Diary), 132 (Diary), 137, note I, editorial; IV, 232. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 145 


to eliminate everything that could possibly interfere with the 
religious development of the boys. His leading view that serious- 
ness, and not levity, is becoming to one who aspires for Christian 
character and for eternal happiness, and that the training of 
Christians must be strenuous and not effeminate, led him to de- 
nounce many things that would seem otherwise harmless. He 
might have been opposed to play on the same ground that he 
opposed frills, fancy dress, and jewelry, because they tend to 
feed the diseases of human nature. Play might engender pride, 
self-will, love of the world, and center the eye of the participant 
upon himself rather than upon God. Such a view harmonizes 
with the section in the Instructions for Children on “How to 
Regulate Our Joy.” His attitude toward “the present stage 
entertainments’ was austere not only because “they naturally 
tend to efface all traces of piety and seriousness out of the minds 
of men,” but also because they give “a wrong turn to youth 
especially, gay, trifling, and directly opposite to the spirit of 
industry and close application to business.”*** It is not unrea- 
sonable to suppose that he was against play at Kingswood for the 
same reasons. 

And, finally, in Wesley’s day the physical, moral, and reli- 
gious values of play had not been discovered. As a matter of - 
fact, play was looked upon as directly hostile to moral and reli- 
gious development. It was for this reason that Francke, a lead- 
ing eighteenth-century educator, said, “Play must be forbidden 
in all its forms,” reflecting in this statement the current attitude 
of many religious leaders. Wesley, at any rate, was obviously in 
agreement with it. His concluding observation on this point is 
that since play has no place in the life of adults it can have no 
rightful place in the life of children. “It is,” he says, “a wise 
German proverb, ‘He that plays when he is a boy, will play 
when he is a man.’ If not, why should he learn now what he 
must unlearn by and by??? 

Wesley’s desire to remove from the children all opportuni- 
ties for corrupting each other and for being contaminated by 


16 Works, VI, 667. 
1% Jbid., VII, 339. 


146 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


town influences led him to follow the example of the school at 
Jena in legislating that the Kingswood boys should never be 
alone, especially during work and sleep, but always in the sight 
of a master. As there was no time for play, it was intended 
that surveillance should be complete. “It is far better to prevent 
evils than to punish them,” is Wesley’s terse explanation.'*® 
This desire also to prevent evil from spreading from one boy 
to another led him to dismiss summarily any member of the 
school detected corrupting his companions.**" 

These rules, together with the theories underlying them, 
remind one forcibly of the Port-Royalist educational practice. 
Passing reference has already been made to the close resem- 
blance between the two systems. ‘The parallel extends even to 
many details of management. The Port-Royalists preferred the 
less thickly settled communities for the location of their 
schools.’°* They were careful in their selection of masters and 
pupils.*°? They maintained absolute control of their pupils 
and close supervision of them.'’? They expurgated their text- 
books.** And they expelled any boy whose character lacked 
signs of indwelling grace lest he should corrupt his fellows.1% 
All this they did, driven by their theology, in the endeavor to 
save the souls of their charges. A more fitting summary of 
Wesley’s educational ideal and practice could hardly be sug- 
gested than this. 

Kingswood School had many periods of spiritual decline, 
and more often than not disappointed Wesley. And when 
Christians were not being made there, he felt the school was 
not answering the purpose of its founding and had better close. 
At such times he would say, “I will kill or cure: I will have 
one or the other—a Christian school, or none at all.” During 
the periods when the fires of the revival swept through it he was 
keenly delighted. But his interest did not wane even when the 





186 Works, VII, 334, 340. 

187 Journal, III, 530-531. 

188 Barnard: The Little Schools of Port-Royal, 76. 

189 Thid., 59-60. 191 Thid., 86-88. 
190 Tbid., 72-73. 192 Thid., 60-61. 


PARTICULAR THEORIES AND METHODS _ 147 


spiritual fires burned slowly. His characteristic determination 
during such periods is revealed in his utterance: “I endeavored 
once more to bring Kingswood School into order. Surely, the 
importance of this design is apparent, even from the difficulties 
that attend it. I have spent more money and time and care on 
this than almost any design I ever had; and still it exercises all 
the patience I have. But it is worth all the labor.”*** 


193 Journal, IV, 80. 


CONCLUSION 


JoHN WESLEY maintained a policy of religious education 
definitely framed and correlated throughout. His theory makes 
use of nearly every element of his theology and is indissolubly 
associated with it. If his theological premises are granted, the 
consequent educational principles appear rational and logical; 
in any other light many of them are eccentric and may be justly 
questioned. It is only natural that, with his severe view of human 
nature and its redemption, he should regard the task of discipline 
and instruction based upon it with such a serious attitude. 

The significance of Wesley as an educator should not be 
judged, however, so much by the particular details of his ped- 
agogy as by the deep-seated conviction which he held that edu- 
cation itself is the most probable method of bringing religion to 
children and making them Christian. He championed the cen- 
tral idea of religious education that children are not to be left 
to grow up in sin, but are, rather, to be carefully disciplined and 
instructed from their earliest years, and with this in view he 
harmonized his doctrine of conversion. He furthermore gave 
a large place to children in the program of the revival and la- 
bored to found and conduct schools for them both within and 
without his societies. He lent his sympathy and gave his active 
support to the Sunday-school movement founded by Raikes, 
but for which “it might have been local and transient.” 

The present age accepts his confidence in education and is 
witnessing the fulfillment of his prophecy regarding the Sunday- 
school movement. The Methodist Church, upon whose shoul- 
ders fell his mantle more directly, is justified by its historical 
connection with this movement and by its theological founda- 
tions in carrying on the work he began. One cannot but venture 
the opinion that were Wesley living in the enlightened twentieth 
century, enlightened both in its theology and in its insight into 
the meaning of childhood, he would advocate the progressive 


theories now held by the church which he founded. 
148 


APPENDIX 


A list showing the topics of the lessons and the sections of Scripture from 
which Wesley made his selections for the Lessons for Children. 


Fe CREM rea LION Cyc, Sie teed Serge ota ay sha. ve aha eee Gen. 1. 1-8 
Pe IEeUe CT eaclOM Nay Dee. ia a eie uses teie a shal Me he ai Gen. I. 9-23 
AS TUNG AAT EUION tifa cicie coeitiabe ya! clay ia ners ane yeas Gen. I. 24-31 
SPATE ALAUIIGES SORRP EC RU Leeda ala eos yoo e hy ea eLae Gen. 2. I-25 
RETR HOM ALL OL NEGING Woop fainig saatecoka te lar toe wk Ak Rees Gen. 3. 1-23 
Gem PE ett SICh AL OLA ye acl isilsh ty aia reed siapotucd eiWa.-ei al oho Gen. 4. 1-26 
PUTAMAT SENOC, ANd. NOR sire fc uit oslo oedions Gen. 5. 3—6. 22 
oh COPA HAT yah Ca QA Ac edie Aes PS OB a aD ede Gen. 7. 11—8. 12 
Op,Otine lend. Or toe Bigod. aii ie eis eh ae eee Gen. 8. 13—9. 29 
10. Of the Tower of Babel and the Birth of Abra- 
ER a gWe Se Atte ae Bae TaN aes de WER ae OF Gen. II. I-31 
11. Of God’s Promise to Abram, and of His Jour- 
ote ard eZ, MEU LE NS Wm haan cane ate Gen. 12. I—13. 18 
12. Of Abraham’s Rescue of Lot, and of Melchi- 
OCLC NE Unmet ett aurea cie asks Be cy aaeks SCL AN Gen. 14. I-23 
13. Of God’s Further Promises to Abraham....... Gen. I5. I—I17. 23 
14. Of Abraham’s Intercession for Sodom......... Gen. 18. 1-33 
15. Of the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah... Gen. Ig. 1-26 
16. Of the Birth and Offering of Isaac............ Gen. 21. I—22. 18 
IFO Wie wWviartiage Of ISAaCi eG. . nikcaaces hee Gen. 24. I-67 
18. Of Abraham’s Death; of God’s Promises to Isaac; 
and of the Birth of Esau and Jacob........ Gen. 25. 7—26. 24 
19. Of Jacob’s Journey and Vision....... by Ae re Gen. 28. I—29. 13 
20. Of Jacob’s Marriages; of His Return Home; of 
His Wrestling with the Angel, and Meeting 
TG SATA Pie ee ee ee a AE ec oe keer Ow seo he Gen. 29. 16—33. 18 
21. Of Jacob’s Children, and Isaac’s Death........ Gen. 35. 23—39. 5 
22. Of Joseph’s Advancement in Egypt........... Gen. 41. I-57 
23. Of the Brethren of Joseph Going to Buy Corn in 
Horta eager. at ae earn ce wc ae nies Gen. 42. 1-38 
24. Of Benjamin’s Going into Egypt............. Gen. 43. 2-33 
25. Of Joseph’s Making Himself Known to His 
ESPEL Tet or ide oe tietete Ay eh ne Te Gen. 45. 1-28 
26. Of Jacob’s:Going into Egypt...3. 2. 63.000... Gen. 46. I—47. 31 
27. Of Jacob’s Blessing His Children, and of His 
DGat tie ettaecrt spay ao we cha lorena kor Ge dept iw Ss Gen. 48. I—49. 33 
28. Of the Burial of Jacob, and the Death of Joseph. Gen. 50. 1-26 
NCEP Itt OL WWLOSES.) Serr ey kk ey wig ae cela es Exod. I. 6—2. 21 
30. Of God’s Appearing Unto Moses, and Sending 
PICO TISUGEl a Mies Mi date a so wis owes ate ate Exod. 3. I-20 


150 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


31. Of God’s Sending Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh. Exod. 4. 10—5. 23 
32. Of the Rod Turned Into a Serpent, and the 
Water Into OO TER Mig nei oie oem ae Exod. 7. 7-23 
33. Of the Plague of Frogs, of Lice, and of Flies.... Exod. 8. 5-32 
34. Of the Murrain, the Boils, the Hail, the Locusts, 


andthe Darinesa yin os sahastatoaty eau eemani ce Exod. 9. I-10. 23 
35. Of the Passover, and the Death of the First- 
DOP EM ene ale an eatin ie noe phen a Mercacoe ey ae Exod. 12. I-41 


36. Of the Journey of the Israelites, and the De- 
struction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea... Exod. 13. 17—14. 30 


37. Of the Quails, the Manna, and Amalek........ Exod. 15. 22—17. 13 
38. Of the Giving of the Law at Mount Sinai...... Exod. 19. I-25 
ao) The Den! Commandments. 3'.024'si0 Vk see ealeiairds Exod. 20. I-20 
AOU VAHOUs Preece Mean cy a uty y ak al an ete are ala Exod. 20. 2I—31. 18. 
Aruvonthe GoideniGMaliig ic Mic wale siateiom lane Exod. 32. I-35 
42, Of Moses Talking With Gods v4), 0s .0 oie Exod. 33. 7—34. 34 
ASA plessing Bnd “a Curse cin ses wine wb eters x wel Lev. 26. 3-44 
44, Of Koreh, Dathan,‘and: Abiram, . 00). 5a Num. 16. 1-35 
AS. OE BAIA ANG DALAaID i yilinile ly waitin aa ba ieee Num. 22. I-35 
46, Balaam's Prophecies seca sa Nate tw vases eee ecu Num. 23. 3—24. 17 
47. An exhortation ite Obedience. eu a we ones Deut. I. I—4. 40 
48. An Exhortation to Obedience... .......05..... Deut. 6. 4—7. 15 
49.) An Exhortation to Obedience) 3 .\0.a'. e's en's ys sla Deut. 8. I-20 
50. An Exhortation to Obedience... ..........5.% Deut. 9. 4—10. 22 
BI; An) pxhortation to Obedience si) 3 ices tae a Deut. 11. I—29. 29 
52, An Exbortation to Obedience i/o. (u osseous Deut. 30. I—31. 6 
AS DPE OTR TOL SVLOSES!. 15.40% iu tacos anaes avec tin ati any eat Deut. 32. 1-43 
54. The Last Words and Death of Moses......... Deut. 33. I—34. 12 
$54 ne dsraciives Pass Over Jordan. cue ne bie as Josh. 1. I—3. 17 
Gu Lie Abang OF |) AEIeHO gi siay 4 aye di aatelte apenas rene Josh. 5. I—6. 27 
57. The Sun and Moon Stand Still... .......:... Josh. 10. I-40 
58. Of Caleb, and of the Two Tribes and a Half... Josh. 14. 6—22. 6 
59. Joshua’s Exhortation Before His Death....... Josh. 23. I—24. 31 
GO, COE Cri dean aya uplearacn boo tnaien tact Eobun eng ng tenth ad Judg. 6. 1-35 
61. The Overthrow of the Midianites............. Judg. 6. 36—8. 32 
i Pah Ooh Cre} sh 3 arta Panto itl Meco nt aR RAN MOC Mee nm ee IM een a Judg. 10. 6—11. 39 
63. Of Samson’s Birth and Marriage............. Judg. 13. I—14. 20 
64. Of Samson's Valor and Death..............5. Judg. 15. I—16. 31 
65. Of the Birth and Childhood of Samuel........ I Sam. I. I—2. 26 
66. God Reveais Himself to Samuel. The Ark 

Laken iby the Philistines wis een ai cae I Sam. 3. I—4. 18 
67. The Ark Restored. Samuel Judges Israel...... I Sam. 5. I—7. 17 
68. Saul Made King, Delivers Israel............. 1 Sam. 8. I—II. 15 
69. The Overthrow of the Philistines............. 1 Sam. 13. 3—14. 23 
70. The Destruction of the Amalekites........... 1 Sam. 15. 1-33 
FAOL David and souatiy oy). Pein koe ae re ie -I Sam. 17. 1-52 
72. pai Seeks'to: Kull David ot way vie ve eae 1 Sam. 18. I—19. 24 


73- David's Escape from Saul...............6... 1 Sam. 22. I—23. 29 


APPENDIX 151 


74. David, by Sparing Saul, Sheweth His Inno- 


CONCU Gen SR TAK Ate ame hee eRe 1 Sam. 24. I—25. I 
Fe. AVIA OPATELD pall AGA. Pansies ne 6 eae pees I Sam. 26. I-25 
GME ERG) VW TUCI) OL EENOOT cls a dilusaie gles ui laia @lorai4 a)oie\e 1 Sam. 27. 3—28. 25 


77. The Death of Saul. David’s Lamentation..... 1 Sam. 31. I—2 Sam.1.27 
78. David Is Made King Over Judah and Israel.... 2 Sam. 2. I—6. 23 
79. Of Bathsheba. David Reproved by Nathan... 2 Sam. 11. I—12. 24 


30,.C% Amnonrand Absalom os) ici. asian Oeste 2 Sam. 13. I—I5. 6 
SP PA DSAOnT Ss IR eDeE EOE ea ee Waar aly stat 2 Sam. 15. 7-—16. 12 
82. The End of Absalom’s Rebellion............. 2 Sam. 16. 15—18. 17 
83. David's Restoration. He Numbers the People. 2 Sam. 19. I—24. 25 
Bay APL POLOTION S VWVASOLL a Hayate etek eh awetad He 1 Kings 2. i—6. 38 
85. Of the Dedication of the Temple, and of the 
Oureenr an Shenae yee ue a Se uk atalae 1 Kings 8. I—II. 43 
86. Of Rehoboam and Jeroboam...-..........3.. 1 Kings 12. I—14. 30 
87. Elijah Fed by the Ravens. ..............0.. 1 Kings 17. I-24 
88. Of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal........... 1 Kings 18. 1-46 
89. Elijah Flees from Jezebel.................... 1 Kings 19. I-21 
90,0 Phe Syrians Overthrow ss Ligne tee ane e alele e 1 Kings 20. I-34 
91. Of Naboth and the Jezreelite................ 1 Kings 21. I-29 
G26 Lie Leach OL GANA YN & Cte acne Ue Cale ie ae tte oe 1 Kings 22. 1-38 
93; Hiyjah" Taken Upito Heaven! icy es i. cae: 2 Kings 2. 1-22 
94. Of the Widow’s Oil, and the Shunammite..... 2 Kings 4. 1-37 
Os ene ure Of Naaman .o04 4548 b.9 See a Ee ak 2 Kings 5. 1-27 
o6Of Elisha ‘and ithe Symans oo) oo bees eels 2 Kings 6. I—7. 17 
97. Jehu Made King. The Death of Jezebel...... 2 Kings 9. 1-37 
98. Jehu Destroys Ahab’s House, and the Wor- 
Snipers Of Baalivlveee eee sta etd ae 4a 2 Kings 10. I-31 
99. Israel Carried Into: Captivity ey ss Peas 6 yes 2 Kings 17. 3-41 
100. Of Hezekiah and Sennacherib................ 2 Kings 18. 3—19. 37: 
TOT eelOStan ye ATR RA AAA AAO Le Sey 2 Kings 22. 1-27 
2 Chron. 35. 20-24 
102. Jerusalem Destroyed. ............. ccc eee ceee 2 Kings 24. 1-21 
TOS ETusaleMm LiesthOVed tka: e tse ule Wikies ale oe is 1 Chron. 12. 16—29. 19 
104. Jerusalem Destroyed. ...........0...2s cece 2 Chron. 10. 5—16. 14 
105.) Jerusalem Destroyed... Ak sa Va aa eke 2 Chron. 19. I—20. 37 
106, *Jerusalem ‘Destroyed... 2.40... b esse eae ks 2 Chron. 24. I—25. 27 
107. Jerusalem Destroyed (cei ate be eee 2 Chron. 26, 1—28. 27 
108. Jerusalem Destroyed..................0ce00: 2 Chron. 29. I—33. 20 
109. Of the Rebuilding of the Temple............ Ezra I. I—3. 13 
110. The Building Hindered, and Begun Again..... Ezra 4. I—6. 22 
111. Ezra Goes to Jerusalem, and Mourns and Prays 
fori the People .'s iis yk nds ees oye house ab Ezra 7. I—I0. 12 
112. The Wall of Jerusalem Rebuilt............... Neh. 1. I—6. 15 
113. The Solemn Fast, Repentance, and Confession 
DET ELEN EOT CN A a Le ale ella ate hcl statis Uae Noia ty vets Neh. 8. I—10. 29 
TIA Esther Made Oueen 3 iy icv e Sarena be wielee eet Esth. 1. I—2. 23 


115. Of Hamon and Mordecai.......... Ee eee nets Esth. 3. I—5. 14 


WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


. Hamon Destroyed, and the Jews Preserved.... Esth. 7. I—10. 3 


117. The Prosperity and Afflictions of Job......... Job 1. I—2. 13 
118. The First Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

Flip hazy Ser cs tee e ecole deta moves elec aa a ee Job 3. I—4. 26 
119. The Second Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

Bildad seas ia caer niles Raw epee ee Job 6. 1—8. 20 
120. The Third Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

TODUAL Aas cise SG Phe nie BT te DE oot Job 9. I—II. 20 
121. The Fourth Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

LiphaZ ci. sated ples sete ates dace «ein per arate tee Job 12. I—15. 34 
122. The Fifth Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

BuUGaae tire ws et a sie oka ee ee ees Job 16. I—18. 21 
123. The Sixth Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

PODNAT Ue heeds Vcc ie oneiron cys cae ea nara Lae ee Job 19. I—20. 29 
124. The Seventh Speech of Job, and the Answer of 

Wl phas ee ipa es Gn oe oie icta tla ee Meee cs Job 21. I—22. 29 
125. Job’s Eighth Speech, Bildad’s Answer, and 

OU SE IRODLY sine re cee arene een ate ee re Job 24. I—27. 23 
126. Job Shews the Price of Wisdom, and Protests 

Hiss Integrity tech ie dy sis vial te aa ee Job 28. I—30. 31 
127. Job Professes His Integrity in Several Duties.. Job 31. I-40 
128. Elihu Reproveth Job and His Friends......... Job 32. 5—33. 33 
120. Hliha Reproveths) OD waists wave len nicky wig ies atecatens Job 34. I—35. 16 
140. Tish Justifeth rod 40 nas a> athinaiwtats pete Job 36. 2—37. 24 
131.7God Answereth Jobte Fie ie vaiea, ered ow tents Job 38. I—40. 5 
132. God Answereth and Blesseth Job............. Job 40. 6—42. 17 

SIS F re piieis piu tiert ers Rie ae in yatit >, SeLytN a times ste inane at anes Psa. 1. I—8. 9 
TSA CR RRY See ome Ritigte ts ayetene pis velpieinaha hie e ateione tera cet Psa. 9. I—I16. I 
LSS cite te tise Ketch eetl Solar ciate Ming Gm mrkianie fara Glee oe oben e a ah Psa. 17. I—I9. 14 
TAGs Te Aeron cia aur oo vane k die phe edi pin ete ey arnt a Psa. 20. I—25. 22 
BIST Werle ik lasts Camnegs ine One b actena atetahaitiaiai a ene er Psa. 27. I—31. 24 

TAO acl e Risid sien a Rath Mies eine aera Whee aye cokes Psa. 33. 2-34. 22 
TAG Tulle le wer ace wie te aw eRe AOe bun @iOlete, sien alate atere Saray Psa. 35. I—38. 22 
MAD Mote at Weel owihcratern ae datas ala tale won Cun een alate arene Psa. 39. I—42. II 
TATSIO M,C cc lenin S Marat ais Vey onbele Migkias Gin ate etcets Psa. 43. I—49. 20 
DUANE Eg ata Waar cass tad wna ee etn eile Uae ald are nrain ta nt etame Psa. 50. I—57. II 
TASH Eee Prete lQine o ttele'a iia dW Aa VSD Cane tie Ue EATS Psa. 59. I—65. 12 
TAA aie ts Nghe araca ais ee e'e evans CON ts gene stee ite ae Psa. 66. I—68. 35 
TAS heme k caiicatan oe ebeis eg. Caisme a eee Biel ean a Patras Psa. 69. I—73. 28 
TAOS Pood shaves aed ails eee eak Oy, ae ale NT Ra reve Psa. 74. I—84. 12 
TATA Pe ele sete TEN eI ERE We aCe ace eae Psa. 85. I—89. 52 
148. A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God.......... Psa. 90. I—92. I5 
TAQ. een ed oh aril te det nie alee ciate a ies tiere Coe Psa. 93. I—97. 12 
Ct EAL Ea COLI iirc PRON Ran Rio or RU U AR Aa ULE On ty) « Psa. 98. I—103. 22 
DHLivipe peice biplk wlolctels em knee wip leak tet caiel Aare ahaa Psa. 104. I-35 
BD eiesta ae 4.9 ibe eI ae oe die ae CO Ee ee ee Psa. 107. I—I12. 9 


* Of the remaining lessons, only lesson 148 has a topic assigned. 


APPENDIX 153 


DS Sey ee ae Rea Ane end Came as ee SI ayy Monks Psa. 113. I—118. 29 
BAA Dy Wl g ie As ENE ap OR Rg APM gy ee NR Psa. 119. I-96 

TOS te neste erp CR Reade Ue A a eth gh a Sie ots Psa. 119. 97-176 

ERG ee teh crt haied Fs 1e Wa he wi bid 0) ceehctaie Psa. 120. 2—I4I. § 

TS Fae te ee tiara iy Ste seek Sia ESetts sate sod Pokce eae ae es Psa. 139. I—144. 15 
DSO rae ae et oy hire ge avis Sees ah hie aac Psa. 145. I—150. 6 

HR AA RAO SPA fe Oe PE oe EL Prov. 1. I—4. 27 

TIM 5 Ri etaMeg RRS aie tats cata! gPe eae wleree na eis’ ores Prov. 5. 3—9. I2 

POLS ets Nota WRC n ie i en a ae tam aaNe sf Dot Ae are Prov. 10. I—13. 24 

bi Fig i eh oom BM Opa 2. ey UR re Pe By a Sy Prov. 14. 6—I9g. 29 

Aen rere aye ME a an itis Sh co eid eta ehies oicaks th Prov. 20. I—23. 32 

Liven meee ety CMe Patan Cuchi abet Sei Ae dv iei'e uses Prov. 24. 10—26. 28 

Nip Spe dete Ree date yaa Cte ivi a) op LUD acta y GHG cabin Cactos: Othe ais Prov. 27. I—3I. 30 

1 RG, eye, Rig ae Le URS 2B ie ES egy Oy 2a Ales bog ratio Wan err Eccles. 1. I—3. 14 

LO Pree eres Mee od OR ee ode wee ewan ee es Eccles. 4. I—7. 29 

LN ented ed Metal fen Uae Sawer Dele cela Wiel a hshe etalk aes Eccles. 8. 8—12. 14 
ROOT rile Cee Lat rhe ik. Pore reseed ale wae wie Isa. I. 2—I2. 6 

RO et chef iN AE trates Uelats co PE tole an cabal oe Isa. 14. 3-32. 17 

Ve BS DOS ay ON a An ar ad rege aires ERGY RA DanC RN MARR Isa. 35. I—40. 22 

5 Br ELIS pe tae 2 Aa ge 8 Aah eA aoa aE Isa. 40. 25—44. 28 

DAT ial fo Seeds te la oc a atasess ahaa Goa ik Oe antes Saves Isa. 45. I—49. 26 

LA eae Meh: Shay ahaha tae ke share Cog ae Leche tale Wiig Viste bis ale.» Isa. 50. 2—53. 13 

TAG ere ee Ce Ge he yo aga ale ot cig ia ple a se Isa. 54. 7—59. 19 

Rete ia sk Ne ne lng Sy tier ahah Wine hie ais a aa ase Isa. 60. I—63. 16 

ST PameTe Rata is bea TIK Rs aie ie ola RS Sek eR Slate Isa. 64. I—66. 2 

Ap ROS a oS HL egies wrth ee Ny NR, ioe RR a nea AB ote ALU Jer. I. 4—9. 24 

Bree eee hdc I edeY ea oe was crea a die walle blebmia, W ae a Jer. 10. 6—29. 14 

DOO See a oie eh ae P e M ame ee cleo ee ees slates Jer. 31. I—33. 9 

PRR Aa PEAy sate 7 hin Ue Oe SAL 8g Aerie A Ezek, 3. 16—18. 23 

TE7 ee eras Re tle RM Wie GA patsy Wid ore a eo ee Ezek. 18. 24—33. 32 
PPS TL Od oR OO ER eRe ist aia aa Sn a Gre hem POPE Dan. I. I—2. 48 

Bee POR eae Cinna bilge os Ara hata el al els nhorede ocd Ge ele e's Dan. 3. I-29 

Be par em Tee re AN nn CUE Cid s' 5 Uigial oeae es ee aocl vise Oe ae oo Dan. 4. I-37 

TRO AEE atm Te alti sine © vite slat lai dhcin weve a hi Re Dan. 6. I-27 

TRF ee en er eas ROU Cee Sein h alac othe w this tetas Wisd. of Sol. 1. I—2. 24 

pe hee ip ng) Ra Ca As Taya eee eS Aaa ll Al OR Wisd. of Sol. 3. I—5. 23 
ERIN MCN MN ee Ra EEE Ne ols ate geile sid! va Wisd. of Sol. 6. 6—7. 16 
TOO One INS tac teed hehehe ee Oe be ee wines Maw Wisd. of Sol. 7. 22—9. 17 
USP PNT i ea ie Ma TORTS Napa oT, AEB Vl AM ar gL a Wisd. of Sol. 11. 20—19. 22 
VISD eaee IS T ae ECE, Pex Os ce TOUS a ERC Goo e a a Reto Ecclesiasticus 1. I—4. 18 
TESS O ME MRR re Eat a tes Fel gS ahs lldne eae @ ne ats Ecclesiasticus 4. 20—9. 15 
POM MELE a Meet ie had ik ci te 4 plac atdie git ore ae ee. Cinta Ecclesiasticus 10. 7—16. 28 
ROS SINE ae eee a tie tte aN L is Sale to a 8 ales Eh pve Ecclesiasticus 17. I—22. 22 
LO rete eters cee kk Sie aa ak ot tea he ea lath Ecclesiasticus 23. I—29. 17 
1s Be ar doa hy yet aise Sai at eR Beek VaR PS a a Ecclesiasticus 31. 5—35. 19 
CREE, a RENE Ss BOTS Ye BE OO A Dap a Ecclesiasticus 36. I—4I. 10 
LOG ere ey eat re the alk wae ic eae a ata ed Bede esd Ecclesiasticus 42. I—50. 23 


ASAE LS: Sed feel SEEM Ciena EEE a ad FCA AL ae Gn la Pa Ecclesiasticus 51. 1-30 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Part I. THe Works oF JOHN WESLEY 


Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. By John Wesley, 
M.A. New York, 1847. 

Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament. By John Wesley, 
M.A. Three vols. Bristol, 1765. 

The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Enlarged from orig- 
inal MSS., with notes from unpublished diaries, annotations, 
maps, and illustrations. Edited by Nehemiah Curnock. Assisted 
by experts. Standard Edition. 8 vols. London, 1909-1916. 

Lessons for Children and Others. Selected from The Holy Scrip- 
tures, by the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. The Second Edition. 
London, 1816. 

Letters of John Wesley. A selection of important and new letters, 
with introductions and biographical notes by George Eayrs. 
with a Chapter on Wesley, His Times and Work, by Augustine 
Birrell. London, 1915. 

A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation, or a Compendium 
of Natural Philosophy. Containing an abridgment of that 
Beautiful Work, “The Contemplation of Nature.’ By Mr. 
Bonnet of Geneva. Also An Extract From Mr. Deuten: “In- 
quiry into the Origin of the Discoveries Attributed to the 
Ancients.” In two volumes. By John Wesley, A.M. Second 
American Edition. Philadelphia, 1816. 

_ The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. Thirty-two vols. Bris- 
tol, 1771-1774. (Contains important writings not found in 
standard editions. Volume twenty-four contains Instructions 
for Christians; early title, Instructions for Children. Volume 
twenty-five contains Primitive Physick.) 

The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. First American and 
Complete Standard Edition, from the Latest London Edition, 
with the Last Corrections of the Author: comprehending also 
Numerous Translations, Notes, and Original Preface, &c. 
Edited by John Emory. 7 vols. New York, 1831. 


Part II. Orser Sources 


A. Books. 


Abbey, Charles J., and Overton, John H. The English Church in the 
E1ghieenth Century. Vol. II. London, 1878. 
154 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 


An Account of the Methods Whereby the Charity-Schools Have 
Been Erected and Managed, and of the Encouragement Given 
to Them; Together with a Proposal of Enlarging Their Num- 
ber and Adding Some Work to the Children’s Learning, Thereby 
to Render Their Education More Useful to the Publick. Lon- 
don, 1705. 

The Annotated Book of Common Prayer. Being an Historical, 
Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System 
of the Church of England. Edited by the Rev. John Henry 
Blunt. New Edition. London, 1895. 

Memoir of Miss Hannah Ball of High-Wycomb, in Buckingham- 
shire. With Extracts From Her Diary and Correspondence. 
Originally compiled by the Rev. Joseph Cole: Revised and 
enlarged by John Parker. London, 1839. 

Barnard, H. C. The Little Schools of Port-Royal. Cambridge, 
1913. 

Baxter, Richard. Practical Works. Edited by Rev. William Orme. 
23 vols. Volume fourteen, Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed 
Pastor, etc. London, 1830. 

Bicknell, E. J. The Christian Idea of Sin and Original Sin, in the 
Light of Modern Knowledge. Being the Pringle-Stuart Lec- 
tures for 1921 delivered at Keble College, Oxford. Second 
Impression. London, 1923. 

Bretherton, Francis Fletcher. Early Methodism In and Around 
Chester, 1749-1812 . . . Chester, 1903. 

Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. New Edition. Revision 
by Luther A. Weigle. New York, 1916. 

Cadman, S. Parkes. The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford and 
Their Movements. New York, 1916. 

The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. VI. The Eighteenth Cen- 
tury. New York, 1909. 

Clarke, Adam. Miscellaneous Works. Vols. I and II. Memoirs 
of the Wesley Family: Collected Principally from Original 
Documents. Second Edition, Revised, Corrected, and Consid- 
erably Enlarged. London, 1836. 

Clarke, Eliza. Susanna Wesley. Famous Women Series. Bos- 
ton, 1886. 

Clarke, William Newton. An Outline of Christian Theology. New 

- York, 1917. 

Cope, Henry Frederick. The Evolution of the Sunday School. 
Boston, 1911. 

Cottier, F. W. Back to Wesley. New York, 1924. 


156 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Cubberly, Ellwood P. The History of Education. (Riverside 
Textbooks in Education.) Boston, 1920. 

Curtis, Olin Alfred. The Christian Faith. New York, 1905. 

Dale, R. W. The Evangelical Revival and Other Sermons. Lon- 
don, 188o. 

Dale, R. W. Fellowship with Christ and other Discourses Delivered 
on Special Occasions. ‘New York, 1892. (Discourse Nine, on 
The Theology of John Wesley. ) 

Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church: 1920. 
New York, 1920. 

Faulkner, John Alfred. The Methodists. New York, 1903. 

Faulkner, John Alfred. Wesley as Sociologist, Theologian, Church- 
man. New York, 1918. 

Fitchett, W. H. Wesley and His Century. A Study in Spiritual 
Forces. London, 1906. 

Godley, A. D. Oxford in the Eighteenth Century. Second Edition. 
London, 1909. 

Green, Richard. The Works of John and Charles Wesley. A 
Bibliography: containing an exact account of all the publica- 
tions issued by the Brothers Wesley, arranged in chronological 
order, with a list of the early editions, and descriptive and 
illustrative notes. London, 1896. 

Gregory, Alfred. Robert Raikes: Journalist and Philanthropist. A 
History of the Origin of the Sunday School. New York, 1877. 

Henry, Matthew. The Life of the Rev. Philip Henry, A.M. With 
Funeral Sermons for Mr. and Mrs. Henry. Corrected and 
Enlarged, by J. B. Williams. London, 1839. 

Hibbard, F. G. The Religion of Childhood; or Children in Their 
Relation to Native Depravity, to the Atonement, to the Family, 
and the Church. Cincinnati, 1864. 

The History of the Kingswood School. By Three Old Boys. (Hast- 
ling, Workman, and Willis.) London, 1808. 

Janeway, James. A Token for Children. Complete, in Two Parts. 
New Haven, 1822. 

King, Henry Churchill. Personal and Ideal Elements in Education. 
New York, 1904. 

Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Pitt Press 
Series. Edited by R. H. Quick. Cambridge, 1880. 

Lockyer, Thos. F. Paul: Luther: Wesley. A study in Religious 
Experience as illustrative of the Ethic of Christianity. Lon- 
don, 1921. 

Lyttelton, Edward. The Corner-Stone of Education. An Essay on 
the Home Training of Children. London, 1914. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 


Macintosh, Douglas Clyde. Theology as an Empirical Science. 
New York, 1919. 

Mackay, W. Mackintosh. The Disease and Remedy of Sin. New 
York, 1918. 

Mackintosh, H. R. The Divine Initiative. London, 1921. 

McConnell, Francis J. The Essentials of Methodism. New York, 
1g16. 

McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. Protestant Thought Before Kant. 
New York, IgII. 

McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas. 
New York, 1915. 

Meredith, William Henry. The Real John Wesley. Cincinnati, 
1903. 

Milton, John. Tractate on Education. A Facsimile Reprint from 
the Edition of 1673. Edited by Oscar Browning. Cambridge, 
1905. 

Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, from the First, Held by the 
Late Rev. John Wesley, A.M., in the Year 1744. Vol. I. Lon- 
don, r812. 

Montmorency, J. E.G. de. The Progress of Education in England: 
A Sketch of the Development of English Educational Organ- 
ization from Early Times to the Year 1904. London, 1904. 

Montmorency, J. E.G. de. State Intervention in English Education. 
A Short History from the Earliest Times down to 1833. Cam- 
bridge, 1902. 

Moore, Henry. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., in which 
are Included the Life of His Brother, the Rev. Charles Wesley, 
A.M., and Memoirs of Their Family; Comprehending an Ac- 
count of the Great Revival of Religion. Two Volumes. New 
York, 1824. 

Moxon, Reginald Stewart. The Doctrine of Sin. New York, 1922. 

Myles, William. A Chronological History of the People Called 
Methodists, of the Connexion of the Late Rev. John Wesley; 
From Their Rise in the Year 1729, to Their Last Conference in 
1802. Third Edition, Enlarged. London, 1803. 

A New History of Methodism. Edited by W. J. Townsend, H. B. 
Workman, and George Eayrs. Two Volumes. Illustrated. 
London, 1909. 

North, Eric McCoy. Early Methodist Philanthropy. New York, 
1914. , 

Pope, William Burt. A Higher Catechism of Theology. New York, 
1884. 


158 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Pope, William Burt. The Peculiarities of Methodist Doctrine. Lon- 
don, 1873. 

The Port-Royalists on Education. Extracts from the Educational 
Writings of the Port-Royalists. Selected, translated and fur- 
nished with an Introduction and Notes by H. C. Barnard. Cam- 
bridge, 1918. 

Rigg, James H. The Living Wesley. Second Edition. London, 1891. 

Rishell, Charles W. The Child as God’s Child. New York, 1go4. 

Sampey, John Richard. The International Lesson System. The 
History of its Origin and Development. Lectures Delivered 
Before the Faculty and Students of the Southern Baptist Theo- 
logical Seminary, February 6-10, 1911. With a Brief Intro- 
duction by Bishop John H. Vincent. Nashville, 1911. 

Sheldon, Henry C. History of Christian Doctrine. 2 vols. New 
York, 1886. 

Simon, John S. John Wesley and the Methodist Societies. Lon- 
don, 1923. 

Simon, John S. John Wesley and the Religious Societies. London, 
1921. 

Simon, John S. The Revival of Religion in England in the Eigh- 
teenth Century. The 37th Fernley Lecture. London (no 
date). 

Southey, Robert. The Life of Wesley; and the Rise and Progress of 
Methodism. 2 vols. Second American Edition. New York, 
1874. 

Stamp, William W. The Orphan-House of Wesley; with Notices of 
Early Methodism in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and its Vicinity. 
London, 1863. 

Stephen, Leslie. English Literature and Society in the ae et 
Century. Ford Lectures, 1903. London, 1904. 

Stephen, Leslie. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century. 2 vols. Second Edition. London, 1881. 

Stevens, Abel. The History of the Religious Movement of the 
Eighteenth Century, Called Methodism, Considered in its Differ- 
ent Denominational Forms, and its Relations to British and 
American Protestantism. Nineteenth Edition. 3 vols. New 
York, 1858. 

Stevenson, George J. City Road Chapel, London, and Its Associa- 
tions, Historical, Biographical, and Memorial. With Engrav- 
ings. London, 1872. 

Sydney, William Connor. England and the English in the Eigh- 
teenth Century. Chapters in the Social History of the Times. 
2 vols. London, 1891. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 159 


Thompson, D. D. John Wesley as a Social Reformer. New York, 
1808. 

Thorndike, Edward L. Educational Psychology. Vol. I, The Ori- 
ginal Nature of Man. New York, 1920. 

Tyerman, L. The Life and Tumes of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., 
Founder of the Methodists. 3 vols. London, 1872. 

Tyerman, L. The Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, M.A., 
Rector of Epworth, and Father of the Revs. John and Charles 
Wesley .. . London, 1866. 

Tyerman, L. The Oxford Methodists: Memoirs of the Rev. Messrs. 
Clayton, Ingham, Gambold, Hervey, and Broughton, with Bio- 
graphical Notices of Others. London, 1873. 

Walker, George Leon. Some Aspects of the Religious Life of New 
England With Special Reference to Congregationalists. Bos- 
ton, 1897. 

Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. New York, 
1918. 

Wardle, Addie Grace. History of the Sunday School Movement in 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. New York, 1918. 

Watson, Richard. Works. Vol. V. The Life of the Rev. John 
Wesley, A.M., and Observations on Southey’s Life of Wesley. 
London, 1835. 

Wedgewood, Julia. John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of 
the Eighteenth Century. London, 1870. 

Weigle, Luther Allan. The Training of Children in the Christian 
Family. Boston, 1922. 

Weigle, Luther Allan, and Tweedy, Henry Hallam. Training the 
Devotional Life. New York, 1919. 

Wesley, Charles. Hymns for Children and Others of Riper Years. 
Second Edition. Bristol, 1763. 

Wilmot, E. P. Eardley, and Streatfeild, E. C. Charterhouse, Old 
and New. London, 1895. 

Winchester, C. T. The Life of John Wesley. New York, 1906. 

Workman, H. B. Methodism. (Cambridge Manuals of Science and 
Literature.) Cambridge, 1912. 

Workman, H. B. The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church. 
New York, 1921. (A revised and expanded reprint of the In- 
troduction to A New History of Methodism. ) 


B. Periodicals 


The Arminian Magazine, consisting chiefly of extracts and original 
treatises on Universal Redemption. London, 1778-1799. 
The Methodist Review. Bi-monthly. New York. Volume Eighty- 


160 WESLEY ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


four, pp. 778-784. (Charles W. Rishell: Wesley and Other 
Methodist Fathers on Childhood Religion.) 

Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. Privately published, 
1898-1914. 

Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, 1898. (No. 1: Ben- 
net and Wesley, Minutes of the Conferences of 1744, 1745, 
1747, 1748. No. 3: Mrs. Wesley’s Conference with Her 


Daughter. ) 


INDEX 


Adam, 16f., 21f., 25, 26, 31, 34, 40. 

Adornments on one’s person, the 
evil of, 49; denial of to children, 
116, 145. 

Anger, the disease of, 27, 31, 98, 119. 

Apocrypha, 126. 

Apostles’ Creed, 128. 

Arminianism, 36. 

Assurance, doctrine of, 63, 64. 


Atheism, the disease of, 17, 24, 25, 


45, 40, 101, 118f., 128. 
Augustine, 27. 


Bands, a division in early Methodist 
societies, 78. 

Baptism, 66f., 73, 86; of children, 93, 
95, 90, 97. 

Baxter, Richard, 134. 

Bible, The, 16, 34, 41, 42, 52, 56, 66, 
69, 72, 80, 92, 115, 121, 126f., 120, 
F317) £33. 

Bonnet, Charles, 41f. 

Boswell, James, 47. 

Bridgen, Thomas Edwin, 94, 103. 


Calvinism, 37-38. 

Candler, Warren A., 42-43. 

Catechism, of the Church of England, 
123; Wesley’s, 127; Westminster, 
Fox1 27. 

Charterhouse School, 144. 

Children, catechizing of, 10, 81f., 
85f.; conversion of, 97-102; de- 
pravity of, 15, 24f., 118; diet of, 116; 
discipline of, 115-122; education of, 
37, 81, 99f.; aim of education of, 
95, 100; examples of piety in, 82f.; 
play of, 144f.; religion of, 10, 81f., 
85f.; societies for, in early Meth- 
odism, 135; teaching of, 115, 122- 
125; textbooks for, 82, 125-129. 

Christian Conference, 75. 


Church, The, 65f., 77. 

Church of England, 10, 13, 70, 76. 
Clarke, Adam, 108. 

Class meetings, 78. 

Comenius, John Amos, 103, 125. 
Conscience, 33, 39. 

Conversion, 35, 36, 73. 

Copernicus, 41. 

Creeds, 96; see also, Apostles’ Creed. 
Curnock, Nehemiah, 47, 76, 89. 


Deism) P44 t77135% 52) 

Depravity, 14, 40, 50, 106; extent of, 
a1fis AQ; LOL. 

Determinism, 34, 37. 

Diseases of human nature, 22, 27, 40, 
49, 52, 58, 61, 80, 94, 95f., 101, 115; 
see also, Anger, Atheism, False- 
hood, Injustice, Love of the World, 
Pride, Self-will, Unmercifulness. 

Dodwell, Henry, 52. 


Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason 
and Religion, 44, 5I. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 14. 

Evil, origin of, 16. 

Evolution, 41-43. 


Faith, 13, 20, 45, 50, 53, 59, 97, 100, 
106; degrees of, 50, 53; justification 
by, 13, 50f. 56f., 75, 79, 81, 87, 
106f.; of a servant and of a son, 
54f. 

Fall, The, 13f., 40, 49, 106, 127, 128. 

Falsehood, the disease of, 27, 119. 

Family religion, 104; see also, Par- 
ents; responsibility of toward 
children. 

Farther Appeal to Men of Reason 
and Religion, 55. 

Fasting, 66, 74f., 126. 

Fletcher, John, 38, 123. 

Francke, August, 145. 

Free-will, 34, 36, 37, 100. 


161 


162 


Froebel, Friedrich, 104. 


God, immanence of, 35; nature of, 
39, 44; omnipotence, 35; omnipres- 
ence, 35. 

God-parents, 96. 

Grace, 34f., 45, 48, 61, 81, 94, 95, 118, 
127, 731, 

Green’s Bibliography, 129, 131. 


Habit, 28. 

Hebden, Samuel, 14. 

Henry, Matthew, 133. 

Henry, Philip, his method of family 
prayer, 133. 

Herrnhut, 144. 

Human nature, 14, 45, 46, 47, 56, 70, 
97, 121, 128, 131; bias of in chil- 
dren, 155f. 

Hume, David, 46, 47. 

Humility, 49, 70. 

Hymns, QI, 131-132. 


Image of God, 32f., 81; moral image 
of in man, 18f., 20, 32, 81; natural 
image of in man, 17f., 32, 81; spir- 
itual image, 17f. 

Individual Differences in people, 79. 

Infants, nature of, 22, 28; see also, 
Human nature. 

Injustice, disease of, 27, 119f. 

Instructions for Children, 82, 
127-129, 132, 134, 135, 139, 145. 


126, 


Janeway, James, 129. 
Jena, school at, 146. 
Johnson, Samuel, 17. 
Justification by faith, see Faith. 


Kingswood School, 9, 82, 86, 90, 101; 
The New Kingswood School, 90, 
97, 120, 137-147; conditions of ad- 
mission into, 139f.; curriculum of, 
138f.; masters in, 141; reasons for 
founding, 138; rules of the board- 
ing house, 141f.; rules of the 
school, 139f., 143f.; textbooks used 
in, 138f. 


INDEX 


Law, William, 80. 

Lessons for Children, 125f. 

Liberty, faculty of, 17, 20, 23, 33. 

Little Schools of Port-Royal, 94-95, 
07, I2tf., 146. 

Locke, John, 51, 103. 

Lord’s Prayer, 96, 128. 

Lord’s Supper, 58, 65, 66, 73. 

Love of God, 44, 58, 72, 79; 85, 96, 
100, 122, 128f. 

Love of Mankind, 44, 58, 70, 72, 79, 
85, 100, 128f. 

Love of the World, disease of, 24, 
26, 95f., 98, 101, 116, 124. 

Luther, Martin, 52. 


McConnell, Francis J., 31. 

McGiffert, Arthur C., 35. 

Mackintosh, Hugh Ross, 4o. 

Means of Grace, 64-76. 

Mercy, works of, 58. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, 9, 148. 

Methodist Polity, 76-80. 

Methodist Preachers, 77, 79f., 127; 
their duties in teaching children, 
131-136; their qualifications, 136. 

Methodist Review, 98f. 

Methodist Societies, 23, 70, 75f., 87, 
90, 127; religious education in, 132- 
136. 

Methodists, The, 49, 52, 62, 71, 73, 78, 
88, 92, I2I, 137. 

Milton, John, 103. 

Moravians, 73, 75f., 103, 144. 

Mothers-in-law, duties of 
home, I17. 


in the 


New Birth, 56, 57, 81, 95; in children, 
97, 08; see also, Regeneration. 

New Testament, see Bible. 

Newton, Isaac, 41. 


Old Testament, see Bible. 

Original Nature, 19, 30, 35, 38, 45. 

Original Sin, 13, 14f., 24, 47, 50, 93; 
in children, 28; relation of to ac- 
tual sin, 22, 27f., 30; transmission 
of, arf. 

Oxford, 55, 70, 76, 107. 


INDEX 


Parents, responsibility of toward 
children, 28, 88, 95, 98, 99, I0I, 104, 
TEOT., | LIO, 122, 

Partial Depravity, see Depravity. 

Pascal, Blaise, 94. 

Penitents in the Early Methodist So- 
cieties, 78. 

Perfection, Doctrine of, 57f., 59; of 
Adam, 18. 

Pestalozzi, Johann H., 103. 

Piety, 57f., 81; works of, 58. 

Port-Royalists, see Little Schools of 
Port-Royal. 

Prayer, 66, 69, 74; education in, 129f.; 
for children, 60f.; for families, 


69f., 72; forms of, 609f.; private, . 


60f., 72; public, 71f. 
Preaching to be graded, 70. 
Predestination, 94. 
Prevenient Grace, 38f., 73. 
Preventing Grace, see 
Grace. 
Pride, disease of, 24, 26, 31, 40, 61, 
95f., 98, 101, 118, 124, 128. 
Primitive Physick, 24, 144. 
Ptolemaic Theory, 41. 


Prevenient 


Raikes, Robert, 148. 

Reason, faculty of, 44, 50; dawn of 
in children, 115, 122. 

Regeneration, 50, 56, 81, 100-102. 

Reid, Thomas, 46. 

Religious Education, purpose of, 87; 
relation to methods of revival, o8f. 

Religious Societies, 76f., 103. 

Repentance, 13, 44f., 47, 52, 57, 79, 
97, 100, 106, 118; in believers, 61. 

Riches, worldly, 49, 121. 

Rigg, James H., 144. 

Rishell, Charles W., o8f. 

Rousseau, Jean J., 46, 47, 103. 


Sabbath, 71. 

Sacraments, 66. 

St. Paul, 21, 60, 104. 

Salvation, 34f., 38, 40f., 48, 77, 70, 
86f.; of children, 93, 97-102, 118. 


163 


Sanctification, doctrine of, 57f., 709, 
87, 106f. 

Schools, 86f., 96, 101; charity, 90; 
condition of in Wesley’s day, 137f.; 
Foundery, 137; religious education 
in, 136-147. 

Scripture, see Bible. 

Self-knowledge, 45, 46, 48f., 55. 

Self-will, disease of, 24, 26, 31, 61, 
Q5f., 101, 106, 115f., 128. 

Sermon on Mount, 45, 48, 70. 

Servants, duty of in the home, 117. 

Simon, John S., 44. 

Sin, 30; in believers, 61; see also, 
Original Sin. 

Social Heredity, 28, 20f. 

Spiritual senses, 50. 

Stevens, Abel, 31, 107. 

Stillness, Doctrine of, 76. 

Sunday Schools, 9, 92, 123f., 148. 


Taylor, Jeremy, 63. 

Taylor, John .E., 14, 46. 

Ten Commandments, 96, 128f. 
Thorndike, Edward S., 19. 
Tokens for Children, 125f. 
Total Depravity, see Depravity. 


Understanding, Faculty of, 17, 20, 23, 
33, 45, 100, 128, 131. 

United Societies of Methodism, see 
Methodist Societies. 

Unmercifulness, disease of, 27, I19. 


Voltaire, 46f. 


War, I5. 
Watts, Isaac, 14, 28. 
Wesley, Charles, 75, 91, 103, 131. 
John, Conversion of, 54-55; insight 
into educational theory and 
method, 103; Journal, 46, 47, 55, 
62, 65, 69, 76, 82, 83, 84, 92, 97, 
108, 121; kindliness to children, 
120f.; philanthropic labors, 9, 23; 
scientific views, 41; significance 
as educator, 148; writings of on 
children, 81-82. 
Samuel, 67, 93, 94, 124. 


164 INDEX 


Samuel, Jr., 89. 

Susanna, 62, 94, 117, 124f.; letter 
on religious education, 109-114; 
relation to educational theory of 
John Wesley, 103-115; theology, 
106f.; training of her own chil- 
dren, 104f.; way of education, 


107-114; writings on religious 
education, 105. 

Will, faculty of, 17, 20,23, 32, 33, 
106, 128; will in children to be 
broken, 116. 

Witness of Spirit, see Assurance. 

Workman, H. B., 10, 37. 





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